Kate Zambreno

I admit it. I have a problem. I'm completely addicted to addiction memoirs. Though I can still get jacked on Denis Johnson, I'm not talking about fictionalized drug horrorshows; I crave straight, unfiltered reality, a vicarious vertiginous thrill ride down the rabbit hole landing in my own vomit or in a stranger's bed. I gobble up these tales of raw desperate half-lives lived in Dante's ninth circle, get high on their anarchy of spirit.

And that's the thing with addicts. They don't snort their line of coke-they gobble it. They don't smoke their cigarette-they suck it. They don't sleep with someone-they fuck into oblivion. Their desire for their drug of choice is clear, consuming, cannibalistic. Sometimes I don't think I've ever wanted anything that much.

My jonesing for junkie true-life tales recalls my early devouring of my grandmother's Harlequin Romances-- "junk," she called them, appropriately--that she would leave scattered around her house. These formulaic soft-porn paperbacks quenched my 5th-grade horniness momentarily, and then I would need another fix. I didn't read them as much as inhale them, flipping through the love/hate courtship, skipping to the good stuff, the inevitable bedroom soft-focus scene with the million and one synonyms for a penis. She grabs his engorged member, takes his manhood in her mouth, he buries himself inside her, etcetera etcetera.

And in a way, addiction memoirs also function as a sort of pornography, the orgasmic high a furious desire to fill a lack. Two fairly new entries into the field, from young maverick writers with attitude problems who can write like motherfuckers, follow similar paths to destruction, and then ultimately redemption: Elizabeth Wurtzel's "More, Now, Again (Simon & Schuster)," recently out in paperback, and James Frey's much-anticipated debut, "A Million Little Pieces (Doubleday)."

We always knew Wurtzel had an addictive personality, but in "More, Now, Again," everybody's favorite depressed Harvard Girl reveals that while writing "Bitch," her scattered, tepid follow-up to "Prozac Nation," she was actually geeked up out of her mind stuffing crushed Ritalin and cocaine up her little button nose. The Courtney Love of the publishing industry also appears on this cover as always, all collagen-lipped and kohl-eyed, pouting, "I am a sick, sick girl." Yeah she is. Absolutely filthy. We're talking "Valley of the Dolls" as set in Soho pseudo-bohemia.

The first part of the book--the so-bad-it's-good part--has Wurtzel snorting lines off an issue of Vanity Fair, eating greasy submarine sandwiches, tweezing her legs bloody, doing more drugs, having a porn-filled affair with a married man, getting jacked on more coke, making manic Post-It Note after Post-It Note in an attempt to organize her "masterpiece," crushing some more Ritalin, and then--this is the best part--sleeping through her photo shoot for a Coach ad campaign after reeling from a cocaine bender. Which is the last straw for this self-proclaimed "adulation whore" whose chaotic existence is a cry for attention. "Finally, people take my sorrow seriously," she writes before checking herself into the posh Silver Hills rehab.

The unique temporality of an addict's life also makes their memoirs engaging. When you read them, you're living on "junk time," as William S. Burroughs says in his memoir "Junky"; the quotidian shrinks to eyedropper size, the narrative divided into lines or hits or scores. The existential process of addiction--and the harrowing experience of imminent withdrawal--brings alive Camus' truth of the body motif. Life becomes corporeal presence: eating, not eating, fucking, shitting, feeling pain, the pleasure of relief in getting high.

Although both authors are taken to rehab at the point of imminent death (these are overachievers here), Frey, the author being touted as the Dave Eggers of addiction (whatever that means), possibly spirals the furthest downward ("A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Fucked-up-ness"). The story begins with the 23-year-old waking up in his own vomit and blood on a plane en route to Chicago so his parents can drive him to the Hazelden treatment center in Minnesota. An addict for the past decade who's been smoking crack for the past three years, he's wanted in three states, one for beating up a cop, has had his face broken, and sports a hole in his nose through years of sniffing gasoline and glue and anything he could find.

Although Wurtzel's memoir devotes half its time to bingeing and relapsing,"A Million Little Pieces" only references the collapse as prologue, centering instead on Frey's withdrawal and subsequent recovery. He still operates on junkie time, however, getting high replaced by the violent need to get high. The rebellious nihilism he calls the Fury paces his days at rehab, besides vomiting up his insides and feeling aching mind-altering pain in his withdrawal symptoms, which is a drug in itself, like when Frey is forced to have a root canal without anesthesia.

In addiction, the drive towards death is also the drive towards love. Love and Death. Eros and Thanatos. "I just want to be alone with my drugs." pleads Wurtzel. "That's all I want. Just leave us alone, let us be happy together. Why can no one just let us be? We are in love, we are a young and misunderstood couple, everyone wants to tear us apart..." Frey does drugs to numb himself from human contact. "I want to run or die or get fucked up. I want to be blind and dumb and have no heart." They substitute for this lost love by fraternizing with the opposite sex--a big no-no in treatment for this reason--Frey with a wounded former crack whore and Wurtzel with anybody.

Although both addicts confess to their ambivalence towards the twelve-step program and being seen as a statistic--Frey completely rejects the tenets of AA and instead turns towards the Tao--junkie talk is inevitably substituted for self-affirming, therapy talk. At the end of both these memoirs, Humpty Dumpty is sewn up again, fear is overcome, the joyous first tastes of normalcy are relished, and our protagonists become intimately bonded with the cast of characters strewn from all paths of life at the treatment centers.

Admittedly once everything got warm and fuzzy in both these memoirs I had trouble picking them back up again. I mean, I feel glad for Frey and Wurtzel. Their stories of overcoming serious addictions against all odds are inspiring and cathartic, sure. It's kind of like the inevitable denouement of the pulpy romance novels I used to read, where proclamations of love are made and marriages are planned.

But the question remains--is the descent out of the heart of darkness as riveting as the journey in?

(2003-04-09)

Also by Kate Zambreno

Dr. Sex
"Jesus, I spent twenty-one years becoming an urban homosexual. Really, it's a full-time job," jokes one, when introducing himself to the Human Sexuality class.
(2003-04-02)

Button it up
Here in the city, the navy blue "No War" button with the white star is fighting with patriotic flair in an accessory street theater of sorts.
(2003-03-26)

Sew fine
Last year Cat Chow asked one thousand people to each donate one dollar, out of which she constructed an expensive-looking evening gown. Although she has been designing what she terms sculptural garments out of everyday objects like baby-bottle nipples, buttons and bobbins since 1997, the resulting work, "Not for Sale," made the artist and her witty, provocative dresses all the fashion.
(2003-03-12)

24 Hour Party People
Anyone who has ever attended Collaboraction's one-act Sketchbook festival, approaching its fourth season this fall, knows that the company has a firm command of spectacle
(2003-03-12)

Tip of the Week
(2003-02-19)

The Mourning After
(2003-02-19)

Freezing mad
(2003-02-19)

The wait is over
(2003-02-11)

Looking for a Buddy
(2003-02-05)

Veteran's luck
(2003-02-05)

Everything 101
(2003-01-22)

Doggie smile
(2003-01-15)

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