This book examines the available research on prevention and treatment to argue that “addiction isn’t a criminal problem, but a health problem.” David Sheff (who also wrote a memoir, “Beautiful Boy,” about living with the addiction of his son, Nic) argues that the “war on drugs” was a failure; we now have more addicts and more types of drugs than we did 40 years ago. Sheff emphasizes that adolescents are a particularly vulnerable group, as drug use can stunt their emotional growth. Though he presents models of “evidence-based treatment,” he concedes that the medical specialty of addiction medicine is a new and inexact science, and that the potential for relapse is a persistent “hallmark of addiction” that requires lifelong vigilance.

Image

MARLENA

By Julie Buntin

274 pp. Henry Holt & Company. (2017)

The story in “Marlena” is told retrospectively by a woman named Cat, as a 30-something adult; she recounts her yearlong friendship with the title character as a teenager in Northern Michigan. The telling is so intimate that one can miss, at first, that Marlena is addicted to the pills she carries around inside a pin on her chest. Marlena takes them openly — once, in class, she feigns a headache as she pops one in her mouth. Only later does Cat begin to understand what the pills are and call them by name: “Oxys and benzos and Addys.” There is a moment when Marlena drops her pin and the pills scatter all over the floor; Cat’s description of the desperation with which Marlena scrambles across the floor to gather them is gut-wrenching. The book is ostensibly about friendship and the indelible mark the troubled Marlena left on Cat, but it is also a quiet, powerful look at addiction.