Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict

"Joshua Lyon preferred opiates, America's fastest growing addiction, and in this enlightening and harrowing pill by pill tour, he maps the secret trades that are taking place in every workplace, gym, bar, and neighborhood. With Pill Head, he demonstrates a crafty addict's ability to rationalize illicit pleasure, and a shrewd journalist's sense to doubt the long-term prospects of artificial narcotic happiness."
--Michael Stein, author of The Addict: One Patient, One Doctor, One Year"Pill Head is the perfect combination of informative and deeply personal; alarming and even sad. I wanted to hug Joshua Lyon after reading this. Anyone who has ever taken prescription medication recreationally should read this book. It's an eye-opener and it's not pretty, and it will speak to every single person who picks it up."
--Lesley Arfin, author of Dear Diary"If we were smart about combating addiction in this country--and, sadly, we aren't--we would chill out about marijuana and freak out about prescription drugs. We are a nation of pill heads, and Joshua Lyon, a pill-head extraordinaire, wants us to step slowly away from the medicine cabinet. Read this much-needed book, and you'll understand why."
--Benoit Denizet Lewis, author of America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life"Lyon writes powerfully about his own experiences as a young, troubled gay man in New York City, and it's this human story that stays with the reader."
--Publisher's Weekly"As real as it gets."
--Kirkus"Journalist Joshua Lyon synthesizes cultural analysis with his own addiction experience to explore the fascinating world of prescription pain killers and their powerful grip. Part investigative journalism, part memoir, Lyon's book illuminates the difficulties of being hooked on legal drugs and how this problem has swept wildly across various demographics."
--Library JournalThe daring and honest PILL HEAD digs far deeper than the average memoir about addiction. With precision and uncommon empathy, Joshua Lyon

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Fall to Pieces: A Memoir of Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll, and Mental Illness

On the surface, Mary Weiland had a fairy-tale life. She was a highly paid fashion model married to successful rock star Scott Weiland, the notorious frontman for Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver. Then came the rampage in a Burbank hotel room and the resulting media frenzy that revealed to the world her bipolar disorder and drug abuse. In "Fall to Pieces", Weiland describes the extreme highs and lows of her life, the volatility of which long hinted at mental illness. Working with acclaimed journalist Larkin Warren, Weiland tells her story with refreshing candour, unflinching detail, and more than a little humor. Reminiscent of celebrity memoirs by Tatum O'Neill, Brooke Shields, and Valerie Bertinelli, Weiland's story offers a window into the world of modelling and rock 'n' roll celebrity while providing deep insights into a serious and misunderstood psychological disorder.

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An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine

From acclaimed medical historian Howard Markel, author of When Germs Travel, the astonishing account of the years-long cocaine use of Sigmund Freud, young, ambitious neurologist, and William Halsted, the equally young, pathfinding surgeon. Markel writes of the physical and emotional damage caused by the then-heralded wonder drug, and how each man ultimately changed the world in spite of it—or because of it. One became the father of psychoanalysis; the other, of modern surgery.
 
Both men were practicing medicine at the same time in the 1880s: Freud at the Vienna General Hospital, Halsted at New York’s Bellevue Hospital. Markel writes that Freud began to experiment with cocaine as a way of studying its therapeutic uses—as an antidote for the overprescribed morphine, which had made addicts of so many, and as a treatment for depression.
 
Halsted, an acclaimed surgeon even then, was curious about cocaine’s effectiveness as an anesthetic and injected the drug into his arm to prove his theory. Neither Freud nor Halsted, nor their colleagues, had any idea of the drug’s potential to dominate and endanger their lives. Addiction as a bona fide medical diagnosis didn’t even exist in the elite medical circles they inhabited.
 
In An Anatomy of Addiction, Markel writes about the life and work of each man, showing how each came to know about cocaine; how Freud found that the drug cured his indigestion, dulled his aches, and relieved his depression. The author writes that Freud, after a few months of taking the magical drug, published a treatise on it, Über Coca, in which he described his “most gorgeous excitement.” The paper marked a major shift in Freud’s work: he turned from studying the anatomy of the brain to exploring the human psyche.
 
Halsted, one of the most revered of American surgeons, became the head of surgery at

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The Harder They Fall: Celebrities Tell Their Real Life Stories of Addiction and Recovery

Now in paperback with updated photos and additional interviews, The Harder They Fall reveals the intimate thoughts, feelings, regrets, and beliefs of celebrities in recovery. Among those profiled are comedian Richard Pryor; musicians Grace Slick, Dr. John, and Chuck Negron; actors Malcolm McDowell and Mariette Hartley; and athletes Dock Ellis and Gerry Cooney. Addiction devoured their pride and accomplishments until each found the courage to ask for help, the honesty to face their disease, and the strength--ultimately--to rebuild a life of extraordinary success. Here, legendary Los Angeles publicist, Gary Stromberg, gives readers an up-close look at fame and addiction, as told by the stars themselves. These are stories of greatness rebuilt--one day at a time.

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Howard Hughes: The Mysterious Billionaire (Titans of Fortune)

Howard Hughes was a mysterious billionaire, heroic, tragic, brilliant, mad, pathological and extraordinarily wealthy. He was a great businessman or a terrible one; the jury is still out. But his life was fascinating and disturbing.

Orphaned at 18 and inheriting millions from his father's estate, Hughes headed to Hollywood where he dallied with Hollywood's most beautiful women including Jean Harlow, Billie Dove, Lana Turner, Jane Russell, Ida Lupino, Rita Hayworth, Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Gene Tierney, Ava Gardner, Gloria Vanderbilt—only 17—and Kate Hepburn, the latter introduced to him by his friend, Cary Grant. He produced and directed many movies, including "Scarface," "Hell's Angels" and "The Outlaw," the latter a trailblazing sex-Western starring Jane Russell. He wanted a studio and purchased RKO from uber-financier Floyd Odlum.

At the same time Hughes was an industrialist and aviation pioneer. While his company Hughes Tool was generating hundreds of millions of dollars in profits annually, Hughes established aircraft companies and airlines, including TWA and Northeast Airlines. He was also a speed junkie who wanted to break world speed, endurance and altitude records. He crashed several times, one crash so severe he nearly died--and opiates administered during his lengthy recovery became a lifelong addiction.

When he sold TWA for $546 million he turned his attention to Las Vegas and began acquiring hotels and casinos the way a child plays the game of Monopoly. He bought the Desert Inn, the Sands, Castaways, New Frontier, Silver Slipper, Harold's Club, North Las Vegas Airport and all the surrounding lands—and nearly a fifth of all the gambling in Nevada. Many credited Hughes for wresting control of the city from the mob.

But the airplane crashes, the drug addiction and his childhood predilection for illness, real or feigned, turned him into a bizarre

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Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption

From rock bottom to recovery—the son of veteran broadcaster Bill Moyers chronicles his life- shattering battle with addiction and the hard-won fight for recovery

William Cope Moyers has come a long, long way. In 1994, he lay on the floor of an Atlanta crack house. His father had put together a search party. His worried family waited at home where Moyers had left them when he embarked on yet another binge. From that lowly, drug-hazed night, Moyers went on to become an executive at the Hazelden Foundation and travels far and wide to talk about addiction and treatment. Broken tells the story of what happened between then and now—from growing up the privileged son of Bill Moyers to his descent into alcoholism and drug addiction, his numerous stabs at getting clean, his many relapses, and how he managed to survive. Harrowing and wrenching, Broken paints a picture of a man with every advantage who nonetheless found himself spiraling into a dark and life-threatening abyss. But unlike other memoirs of its kind, Broken emerges into the clear light of Moyers’s recovery as he dedicates his life to changing the politics of addiction. Beautifully written with a deep underlying spirituality, this is a missive of hope for the scores of Americans struggling with addiction—and an honest and inspiring account that proves the spiritual insight that we are strongest at the broken places.

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Shantaram: A Novel

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured."

So begins this epic, mesmerizing first novel set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of a city where he can disappear.

Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter Bombay's hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere.

As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city's poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power.

Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas---this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart. Based on the life of the author, it

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