New Book Alert: Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me by Erin Khar; Deeply Emotional Account of Heroin Addiction, Recovery, and the Psychology Behind the Addiction
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: It is interesting that I am reviewing Erin Khar’s Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me for this blog at the same time that I am reviewing The United States of Opioids by Harry Nelson for another site. Both books illustrate how large the Opioid Crisis has become and how it affects both society and the individual. The latter book is a dry fact based account of the Crisis and how it began as well as the various institutions and people that put the Crisis in motion. What it lacks is the personal and the individual case story of people with addictions. It sacrifices the details for the picture of the crisis at large.
Erin Khar's memoirs fills that need. It fills in the details and makes the Opioid Crisis personal. It tells the story of Khar's struggles with drug addiction as well as the mindset that led her down this path as well as her recovery from her addiction.
Khar, a radio advice columnist, was inspired to write this memoir after watching a news report on opioid addiction with her then-twelve-year-old son, Atticus. Atticus asked if his Mom ever had taken drugs. Khar was stunned at the question and hoped that she would never have this conversation with her son, so she could maintain his innocence. She explained why people became addicted and realized that she had to open up about her own past.
Khar writes the mindset of a person with an addiction really well. One way that she accomplishes that is by showing the reasons behind the addiction. Many people think that the addiction is the problem, full stop. When a person breaks their addiction, then they will be fine. Khar's writing shows that is not always the case.
Even before she first sneaked Darvocet from her grandmother's medicine cabinet, Khar was beset with problems that made her young life impossible. Her parents’ divorce along with her father's behavior in trying to buy her love with material possessions and her mother's involvement with an abusive boyfriend traumatized her. Khar had low self-esteem and even as young as four years old, she cut herself and held notions of suicide.
Throughout her young life, Khar derided herself as “ugly” and a “monster,” feeling insults from other children and rejection from boys deeply.
In a later chapter, Khar encountered an old family friend and had a panic attack. She remembered that he molested her when she was four years old and blamed herself ever since. These incidents reveal the lost soul that Khar was before she stole the Darvocet and injected heroin with her boyfriend at 13 and began an addiction that claimed her teen and young adult years.
Khar's book is graphic in its detail about her addiction and how it affected her friendships and romances. Through high school, Khar lived the exterior of the perfect A+ student who was a cheerleader, volleyball player, and horseback rider. In her spare time, she swallowed pills from friend's medicine cabinets, cut herself, took heroin, and slept with her boyfriend, Ted. Much of Khar's retreat into her addiction stemmed from her trying to act like the perfect student in front of everyone so she could hide the pain underneath. Readers with addictions and psychiatric disorders will completely understand this exhausting masquerade that they use to hide the lost soul underneath.
After her grandmother's death when she was fifteen, Khar withdrew from her egocentric father and depressed mother and explored the night life in ‘90’s downtown L.A. that involved her going to clubs, dating several unappealing men, and of course frequent drug use. She lost many of her friends and boyfriends. Ted and Khar broke up after Sam, Ted's cousin and another drug user that she was seeing on the side, died of an aneurysm. Her best friend Ellen, with whom Khar saw many rock bands, broke up with her after she spent too much time with another boyfriend, Ian. Ian, an older man, ended things with her because they were far apart in age (though Khar suspected that he was seeing someone else.). The breakups sent Khar in an even further downward spiral as she experimented with crystal meth and pills.
She dated a drug dealer named Mike-Jim (“He said his name was Mike, but really it was Jim or the other way around,” Khar said) so he could supply her with her new drug of choice,crystal meth. Another unstable boyfriend, Will admitted that he put thirty phenobarbital in her spaghetti after she broke up with him.
These chapters grimly show how each break up, each disappointment, and each instance of abuse and mistreatment can bruise an already fragile personality. To cope, sometimes a person with an addiction can use that as a reason to continue their addiction.
Even when she tried to find a fresh start, Khar was surrounded by her old demons. She spent some time in Paris attending Sorbonne University, going to cafés and museums, making new friends, and trying her best to break her addiction. She became involved with Vincent, a Frenchman, who eventually moved to Los Angeles with her. When she discovered that he hadn't broken up with his old girlfriend, he moved out and she relapsed back into heroin.
In 1997, during the height of the so-called “heroin chic” trend, Vincent and Khar’s mother forced her into rehab. While she tried to follow the twelve-step program to the letter and bonded with many of her fellow patients, her addiction was never truly far behind. A friend at the rehab overdosed during his release and she was too terrified of a relapse to go help him, sending her mother instead.
When she was caught between two men, she missed heroin and returned to the drug.
During a psychiatric session with her mother, Khar's PTSD from her earlier molestation was mentioned. Her mother's denial of the events sent Khar into depression and a return to cutting as well as the drugs.
It is truly heart-breaking to read about this woman travelling from place to place, friend to friend, lover to lover hoping to break her addiction. But the seemingly endless cycle continues and she once again finds herself alone and reaching for the needle or the bottle.
There are some truly chilling moments that reveal how a drug addiction can be unpredictable and frightening, to the point that a person with an addiction can't trust their own mind, body, or the people around them. During rehab, Khar hallucinated spiders crawling up and down her room.
After she and her friend, Diana, had shot up, Khar accidentally o.d.’ed, to the point that she almost died.
A pregnancy with Jack, a troubled boyfriend, ended in an abortion, but Khar continued the relationship because of the drug access they provided for each other. Khar knew the relationship was unhealthy (“The difference between us was that Jack was a drug addict and I was a mentally ill person who had an addiction,” Khar said), but stayed with him.
Many of Khar's transactions put her at the forefront of the socioeconomic gap and she realized that as a biracial woman from a wealthy family, she had advantages such as access to good rehab centers and treatment programs, that many of her fellow addicts and dealers did not.
She bought drugs from many people who were on the lower economic scale and were primarily black and Latino. She witnessed many of the unfair treatment they got such as harsher prison sentences or deportation while she and others of her background were given court appointed rehab.
In one haunting moment, Khar bought drugs from a 12-year-old African-American boy. She reasoned that a 12-year-old doesn't just wake up one day and decide to sell drugs. He sells them because he has no other options in the neighborhood in which he lives and is denied many of the employment, education, and health access that Khar had.
Khar finally kicked her addiction for good, when she was pregnant with her son, Atticus. However, many of the reasons behind her addiction such as low self-esteem and unhealthy relationships continued. Atticus’ father, Michael continued to hold her addiction over her head and refused to admit his infidelities causing Khar to solely blame herself for the end of their marriage. She also started a clothing line with a friend that fell apart so she avoided situations and her friendship ended for a time.
These last chapters reveal the end of the addiction is not the whole story, especially when the reasons behind the addiction remain. When she held Atticus for the first time, Khar repeated a mantra: I love him more than I hate myself realizing that she still had the capacity for love.
She began to make healthier choices like hanging out with better friends who encouraged her sobriety or had recovered themselves and acted as guides to aid her. She got involved with Yoga to help change her mindset and outlook. She found her gift for writing and took to blogging essays and an advice column, Ask Erin.(“She's made all the mistakes so you don't have to.”) She also fell in love with and married Seth and had a second child, Franklin finding stability and happiness in her family.
Erin Khar's book is brilliant at capturing not only a drug addiction, but the reasons and mindset that created the addiction and the resources, healing, and emotional support that one needs to make a full and complete recovery.
It is truly heart-breaking to read about this woman travelling from place to place, friend to friend, lover to lover hoping to break her addiction. But the seemingly endless cycle continues and she once again finds herself alone and reaching for the needle or the bottle.
There are some truly chilling moments that reveal how a drug addiction can be unpredictable and frightening, to the point that a person with an addiction can't trust their own mind, body, or the people around them. During rehab, Khar hallucinated spiders crawling up and down her room.
After she and her friend, Diana, had shot up, Khar accidentally o.d.’ed, to the point that she almost died.
A pregnancy with Jack, a troubled boyfriend, ended in an abortion, but Khar continued the relationship because of the drug access they provided for each other. Khar knew the relationship was unhealthy (“The difference between us was that Jack was a drug addict and I was a mentally ill person who had an addiction,” Khar said), but stayed with him.
Many of Khar's transactions put her at the forefront of the socioeconomic gap and she realized that as a biracial woman from a wealthy family, she had advantages such as access to good rehab centers and treatment programs, that many of her fellow addicts and dealers did not.
She bought drugs from many people who were on the lower economic scale and were primarily black and Latino. She witnessed many of the unfair treatment they got such as harsher prison sentences or deportation while she and others of her background were given court appointed rehab.
In one haunting moment, Khar bought drugs from a 12-year-old African-American boy. She reasoned that a 12-year-old doesn't just wake up one day and decide to sell drugs. He sells them because he has no other options in the neighborhood in which he lives and is denied many of the employment, education, and health access that Khar had.
Khar finally kicked her addiction for good, when she was pregnant with her son, Atticus. However, many of the reasons behind her addiction such as low self-esteem and unhealthy relationships continued. Atticus’ father, Michael continued to hold her addiction over her head and refused to admit his infidelities causing Khar to solely blame herself for the end of their marriage. She also started a clothing line with a friend that fell apart so she avoided situations and her friendship ended for a time.
These last chapters reveal the end of the addiction is not the whole story, especially when the reasons behind the addiction remain. When she held Atticus for the first time, Khar repeated a mantra: I love him more than I hate myself realizing that she still had the capacity for love.
She began to make healthier choices like hanging out with better friends who encouraged her sobriety or had recovered themselves and acted as guides to aid her. She got involved with Yoga to help change her mindset and outlook. She found her gift for writing and took to blogging essays and an advice column, Ask Erin.(“She's made all the mistakes so you don't have to.”) She also fell in love with and married Seth and had a second child, Franklin finding stability and happiness in her family.
Erin Khar's book is brilliant at capturing not only a drug addiction, but the reasons and mindset that created the addiction and the resources, healing, and emotional support that one needs to make a full and complete recovery.
