Memoirs of Addiction, Addiction to Memoirs

I remember once, a long time ago, sitting in a library and thumbing through a first-person expose of the medical profession, written in the late 1950s. The author apparently had done some pretty scummy things, and so "Dr. X" wrote anonymously. So when I say "Dr. X" was the name of the author, it was literally "by Dr. X."

Dr. X posed on the cover wearing scrubs and a hood, back to the camera. The not-so-good doctor was not about to be outed for his sins.

Fast forward about 60 years to 2010, when an excerpt of a memoir, "Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man,"*  appears online. If the catty comments are to be believed, the last thing the reading public wants is yet another memoir of a white, upper-class addict. But there it is. 

The excerpt left me less-than-interested, not because it was poorly written, that I lacked sympathy for the writer, or even because I never wondered what a literary agent goes through when he trades his life for some crack (though I always felt my former one had done something similar). The problem is that I feel like I already know what it's like to be a crack addict — because it's been written a million times over already.

It used to be chronicling tawdry excess was not only shocking, but gave a first-person view of a world many of us would rather read about than witness. 

But we have seen the bazillion and one memoirs of addiction, be it addiction to booze, coke, heroin, crack, meth, painkillers, gambling, or sex. We have seen those that are fake or horribly narcissistic (then again, what memoir isn't?), and even those that actually have a greater purpose than mere solipsism. Though any memoir may be superior than those that walked before it, the ground has been covered by a million little semis filled with wet cement.

That the usual compulsive behaviors haven't stopped the memoir industry, which publishers happily embrace as the reading public can't get enough of it. So since running out of topics about the usual compulsive behaviors, there memoirs about addiction insomnia, or to sexual acts depicted in movies with titles such as "Butt Sluts Go Nuts (Vols. 1-34)." 

Dr. X's masterwork did not detail an unquenchable lust for morphine or golf, but was unflinching in its honesty. Today, that won't cut it. As one critic put it, "Candor is surely too epidemic in the popular culture, these days, to qualify any longer as courageous." 

Instead, there are two constants in addiction memoirs: 

1. The author must describe his or her spiral to the bottom, in gory, graphic detail.

2. The author must describe his or her recovery, in gory, graphic detail.

And for this, you get a book contract

The latter condition is important because, face it, if there wasn't a recovery, there wasn't gonna be a book. When was the last time you read a memoir of an addict in the midst of his illness? Who just ain't gonna make it? Probably never (Amy Winehouse or Linsey Lohan, here's your chance!). One senses recovering addicts write their memoirs because it's part of their recovery. 

What all this means, as a writer, is that no longer is it important to say something new or repeat old verities in an interesting manner. Because, once you get past the details, every addiction memoir is pretty much like all the rest: bad childhood, turn to drugs, ruin one's life, recover, write.

I wonder what Bill Wilson would think of all this. A taciturn New Englander and the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, "Bill W." viewed recovery as being uncompromisingly honest in examining one's motives. He would have appreciated that all these crack or heroin or booger-eating addicts got help, but I am sure he would have cast a gimlet eye upon their motivations.

Why did they really need to share their tales of debauchery in print–with their faces plastered on the cover–instead of simply in a roomful of fellow addicts puffing Camel Lights and throwing down black coffee?

Winehouse: words cannot do justice

I think he would hit upon the reason quite quickly: yet another compulsive behavior, the need to write and be noticed. Which, let's face it, is the reason why any of us wretches are doing this writing thing, anyway. At least me.

*Weird coincidence: the person writing the memoir is a literary agent who once contacted Wife, not long before the events described took place. Small world.