Tagged: addiction

    In his new book, Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America's Greatest Tragedy, David Sheff shows that addiction is a preventable, treatable disease, not a moral failing.

Sheff’s ongoing research and reporting on the science of addiction earned him a place on Time Magazine's list of the World's Most Influential People.

    Mary Williams was born to Black Panther parents during the heart of the Black Power movement in Oakland, Calif., in the 1970s. She was just a toddler when her father went to San Quentin prison.

Her mother, struggled to support the family on her own, turning to alcohol, as her oldest sister turned to crack and prostitution. But when Williams was sent to spend the summer at a camp run by Jane Fonda, her life began to change.

Over the course of several summers, Fonda and Williams grew close, and eventually, the Hollywood star invited Williams, at age 16, to come live with her in Santa Monica. This was the beginning of a journey, which she chronicles in her new memoir, The Lost Daughter.

    Kristen Johnston was 26 when she was cast as John Lithgow's co-star in the hit NBC sitcom, 3rd Rock From the Sun. Suddenly famous, Johnston was unprepared to handle the pressure. She ended up popping lots of pain pills, almost dying in a London hospital when an ulcer in her stomach exploded while she was set to star in a new show on London's West End.

Johnston's book, Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster, is a profane, outrageous, tragic, hilarious and often disturbing portrait of an addict who nearly succumbed to her disease.

Johnston joins us for a candid conversation about her addiction. 

Domenica Ruta grew up in a working-class, Italian town north of Boston. Her mother, Kathi, a notorious figure in this place, was a drug addict and sometime dealer whose life swung between welfare and riches, whose highbrow taste was at odds with her base appetites.

With or Without You: A Memoir is the story of Domenica Ruta’s unconventional coming of age—a darkly hilarious chronicle of a misfit ’90s childhood and the necessary and painful act of breaking away, and of overcoming her own addictions and demons in the process.