Reply #26: people in recovery tend to trust "the recovered"

[izzybeans]

more than an unsympathetic medical professional. I only mention it because my uncle is currently on his third stint and was reading this book and thought it was a model for himself.

Whoring, lying or not. This CYA b.s. for exaggerating a memoir is not serving the actual intended audience of that book very well. Oprah and the publisher. Publishers put up with all sorts of misrepresentations in biographies, memoirs, etc. in books written by folks who presumably aren't addicts.

I find this uproar disingenuous and counterproductive. Whether fiction or not, that book was connecting with people that needed some form of connection other than between the needle and the mainline. My uncle understood some of the scenes were a bit too cartoonish, but then again when he was actually inpatient the whole experience was a little bit too much like "trainspotting" to lodge it accurately in his memory.