The Addict's Widow


Book Description

Witnessing the addiction of a family member or loved one is a heart-breaking experience. This candid, raw, and unforgettable memoir is a true-life story of how a loving wife tried to save her husband from an opioid addiction. Unlike some popular memoirs, this story alternates between the human and evil sides of living with an addict. She discovered that not only was her husband's drug addiction spiraling out of control, but that his doctor was at the root of it all. The Addict's Widow gives voice to the emotions and pain shared by the families of addicts. Above all, it is a powerful personal story of how a mother struggled to keep her children from witnessing the unthinkable while trying to keep her husband alive. Part 2 of Claudia's memoir, Picking Up the Pieces is her continued journey on how her and her children recovered from this life shattering experience and found happiness and peace after all.




Smacked


Book Description

A journalist pieces together the mysteries surrounding her ex-husband’s descent into drug addiction while trying to rebuild a life for her family, taking readers on an intimate journey into the world of white-collar drug abuse. “A rare combination of journalistic rigor, personal courage, and writerly grace.”—Bill Clegg, author of Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man Something was wrong with Peter. Eilene Zimmerman noticed that her ex-husband looked thin, seemed distracted, and was frequently absent from activities with their children. She thought he looked sick and needed to see a doctor, and indeed, he told her he had been diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. Yet in many ways, Peter seemed to have it all: a beautiful house by the beach, expensive cars, and other luxuries that came with an affluent life. Eilene assumed his odd behavior was due to stress and overwork—he was a senior partner at a prominent law firm and had been working more than sixty hours a week for the last twenty years. Although they were divorced, Eilene and Peter had been partners and friends for decades, so when she and her children were unable to reach Peter for several days, Eilene went to his house to see if he was OK. So begins Smacked, a brilliant and moving memoir of Eilene’s shocking discovery, one that sets her on a journey to find out how a man she knew for nearly thirty years became a drug addict, hiding it so well that neither she nor anyone else in his life suspected what was happening. Eilene discovers that Peter led a secret life, one that started with pills and ended with opioids, cocaine, and methamphetamine. He was also addicted to work; the last call Peter ever made was to dial in to a conference call. Eilene is determined to learn all she can about Peter’s hidden life, and also about drug addiction among ambitious, high-achieving professionals like him. Through extensive research and interviews, she presents a picture of drug dependence today in that moneyed, upwardly mobile world. She also embarks on a journey to re-create her life in the wake of loss, both of the person—and the relationship—that profoundly defined the woman she had become.




Strung Out


Book Description

“This is a story she needed to tell; and the rest of the country needs to listen.” — New York Times Book Review “This vital memoir will change how we look at the opioid crisis and how the media talks about it. A deeply moving and emotional read, STRUNG OUT challenges our preconceived ideas of what addiction looks like.” —Stephanie Land, New York Times bestselling author of Maid In this deeply personal and illuminating memoir about her fifteen-year struggle with heroin, Khar sheds profound light on the opioid crisis and gives a voice to the over two million people in America currently battling with this addiction. Growing up in LA, Erin Khar hid behind a picture-perfect childhood filled with excellent grades, a popular group of friends and horseback riding. After first experimenting with her grandmother’s expired painkillers, Khar started using heroin when she was thirteen. The drug allowed her to escape from pressures to be perfect and suppress all the heavy feelings she couldn’t understand. This fiercely honest memoir explores how heroin shaped every aspect of her life for the next fifteen years and details the various lies she told herself, and others, about her drug use. With enormous heart and wisdom, she shows how the shame and stigma surrounding addiction, which fuels denial and deceit, is so often what keeps addicts from getting help. There is no one path to recovery, and for Khar, it was in motherhood that she found the inner strength and self-forgiveness to quit heroin and fight for her life. Strung Out is a life-affirming story of resilience while also a gripping investigation into the psychology of addiction and why people turn to opioids in the first place.




Porn Addict's Wife


Book Description

From a Certified Life Coach, a recovery program for women impacted by a spouse’s pornography addiction. Are you feeling shocked, betrayed, devastated, and downright angry after discovering your husband is addicted to pornography? Are you wondering: how could he do this to me or, why aren’t I enough for him? Do you wonder if your marriage is over? Are you feeling lost and alone? Life and relationship coach Sandy Brown has been there. Her own experience in surviving the betrayal of her husband’s porn addiction has inspired her to focus her practice on helping other women to do the same. Through her own recovery and her experience with clients, Sandy has developed a process of recovery to empower women at a time when they feel all is lost. Porn Addict’s Wife shows readers that they are not alone in feeling shattered by their husband’s sexual addiction, and teaches them how and with whom they can safely share their story. By providing resources for readers to get real help for both themselves and their spouse, it provides guidance to healing and rebuilding a normal life.




Beautiful Things


Book Description

Hunter Biden recounts his descent into substance abuse and his tortuous path to sobriety. The story ends with where Hunter is today




Suicide Widow


Book Description

Suicide Widow is about a young woman who has struggled her whole life with adversities and was forced into widowhood at 28 years old. This book touches on suicide, grief, broken families, addiction, depression and anxiety, abandonment, death, and the awfulness of people during trauma and tragedy.




The Girl from Widow Hills


Book Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last House Guest—a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick—comes a riveting new novel of psychological suspense about a young woman plagued by night terrors after a childhood trauma who wakes one evening to find a corpse at her feet. Everyone knows the story of “the girl from Widow Hills.” Arden Maynor was just a child when she was swept away while sleepwalking during a terrifying rainstorm and went missing for days. Strangers and friends, neighbors and rescue workers, set up search parties and held vigils, praying for her safe return. Against all odds, she was found, alive, clinging to a storm drain. The girl from Widow Hills was a living miracle. Arden’s mother wrote a book. Fame followed. Fans and fan letters, creeps, and stalkers. And every year, the anniversary. It all became too much. As soon as she was old enough, Arden changed her name and disappeared from the public eye. Now a young woman living hundreds of miles away, Arden goes by Olivia. She’s managed to stay off the radar for the last few years. But with the twentieth anniversary of her rescue approaching, the media will inevitably renew its interest in Arden. Where is she now? Soon Olivia feels like she’s being watched and begins sleepwalking again, like she did long ago, even waking outside her home. Until late one night she jolts awake in her yard. At her feet is the corpse of a man she knows—from her previous life, as Arden Maynor. And now, the girl from Widow Hills is about to become the center of the story, once again, in this propulsive page-turner from suspense master Megan Miranda.




America Anonymous


Book Description

America Anonymous is the unforgettable story of eight men and women from around the country -- including a grandmother, a college student, a bodybuilder, and a housewife -- struggling with addictions. For nearly three years, acclaimed journalist Benoit Denizet-Lewis immersed himself in their lives as they battled drug and alcohol abuse, overeating, and compulsive gambling and sexuality. Alternating with their stories is Denizet-Lewis's candid account of his own recovery from sexual addiction and his compelling examination of our culture of addiction, where we obsessively search for new and innovative ways to escape the reality of the present moment and make ourselves feel "better." Addiction is arguably this country's biggest public-health crisis, triggering and exacerbating many of our most pressing social problems (crime, poverty, skyrocketing health-care costs, and childhood abuse and neglect). But while cancer and AIDS survivors have taken to the streets -- and to the halls of Congress -- demanding to be counted, millions of addicts with successful long-term recovery talk only to each other in the confines of anonymous Twelve Step meetings. (A notable exception is the addicted celebrity, who often enters and exits rehab with great fanfare.) Through the riveting stories of Americans in various stages of recovery and relapse, Denizet-Lewis shines a spotlight on our most misunderstood health problem (is addiction a brain disease? A spiritual malady? A moral failing?) and breaks through the shame and denial that still shape our cultural understanding of it -- and hamper our ability to treat it. Are Americans more addicted than people in other countries, or does it just seem that way? Can food or sex be as addictive as alcohol and drugs? And will we ever be able to treat addiction with a pill? These are just a few of the questions Denizet-Lewis explores during his remarkable journey inside the lives of men and women struggling to become, or stay, sober. As the addicts in this book stumble, fall, and try again to make a different and better life, Denizet-Lewis records their struggles -- and his own -- with honesty and empathy.




Poppies, Pipes, and People


Book Description

Opium production and use connote international intrigues, illicit wealth, and social degeneracy to industrialized societies. The experiences and attitudes of those growing and using opiumin poppy-producing areas are not always so dramatic or so negative. For a total of three years between 1965 and 1975, Joseph Westermeyer practiced medicine and studied the function of opiumin Laos, where it is a cash crop, and from 1975 to 1982 he spent an additional six months studying opium addiction in other parts of Asia. His work gives a clear picture of the very different ways opium and its use are regarded in a developing agricultural society. Opium is a mainstay of the highland economy in Laos. Ease of Transport gives the poppy great advantage over other cash crops, although growers readily abandon its cultivation for work or animal husbandry that offers a higher profit. Opium can sometimes be used without addiction as a recreational intoxicant or folk medicine, but addiction is always a possibility, especially among the growers of the poppy themselves. Opium consumption can initially enhance productivity, but its long-term use is generally debilitating, and the biomedical, psychological, and familial problems commonly associated with drug addiction also occur in Laos. Westermeyer describes heroin as well as opium addiction, includes a chapter on Caucasian addicts, and evaluates indigenous and medical treatments for addiction. He shows how, lacking the cross-cultural perspective offered here, attempts by the United States to restrict opium flow have had little regard for the effect of narcotics policy on other countries, and actually opens the way for heroin use in Laos. Westermeyer's careful documentation is supplemented by individual vignettes that give a sense of the complex and often unpredictable reality of drug use. HIs analysis will change many stereotypic notions of opiate use in Asia, as it takes into account the myriad views and needs of people living under vastly different circumstances. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.




Widows-in-Law


Book Description

After the sudden death of her ex-husband, Brian, Lauren helps Brian’s much-younger widow, Jessica, arrange the funeral and settle his affairs. Although they were once adversaries in the battle for Brian’s heart, Lauren agrees to pitch in for the sake of their troubled sixteen-year-old daughter, Emily. But Lauren gets much more than she bargained for when information comes to light about Brian’s shady business deals with his old college friend Jordan Connors and the crime lord Jorge Arena, jeopardizing Brian’s estate and throwing the women into the world of high-stakes illegal gambling. With only a few days to find out where Brian hid millions of dollars in bonds and in fear for their lives, Lauren, Jessica, and Emily must set aside their differences and work together to secure their inheritance and evade Jorge Arena’s murderous crew. Widows-in-Law is a gripping tale of mothers and daughters, wives and ex-wives, broken and remade families, and unlikely partners-in-crime. Most of all, it is a moving story about the women left behind to clean up the messes men make.




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