The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath Summary
Leslie Jamison

The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath Overview

In The Recovering, Leslie Jamison interweaves the journey of her personal recovery from alcohol with a myriad of addiction tales and literary critiques to turn the traditional recovery memoir on its head. Over the course of her 20s, Leslie becomes increasingly addicted to alcohol, struggles to accept her addiction, hides her dependency from those she loves, including the man she wants to one day marry, and, with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous and her new adventures in reportage, comes to recover from her addiction. At the same time we follow Leslie's recovery story, we follow an overarching discussion of various writers relating to addiction and artistic creativity. Embedded in the memoir are deeply probing commentaries on such artists as Charles Jackson, Malcolm Lowry, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, David Foster Wallace, Jean Rhys, Amy Winehouse, and Billie Holiday. In this thoughtful and highly innovative work, Jamison tackles among others, the themes of addiction, sobriety, love, work, dependence, empathy, community, creativity, and the courage and wisdom necessary in letting go of that which we cannot imagine living without.