Brain on Fire meets High Achiever in this visceral, propulsive memoir detailing a woman’s accidental descent into prescription benzodiazepine dependence and the life-threatening impacts of the drugs’ long-term use. As Melissa Bond raises her infant daughter and a special-needs one-year-old son, she suffers from unbearable insomnia, sleeping an hour or less each night. She loses her job as a journalist (a casualty of the 2008 recession), and her relationship with her husband grows distant. Her doctor casually prescribes benzodiazepines—a family of drugs that includes Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan—and increases her dosage on a regular basis. Following her doctor’s orders, Melissa takes...
Publisher: Gallery Books (June 14, 2022) Pages: 288 pages ISBN-10: 1982188278 ISBN-13: 978-1982188276 ASIN: B09JPJX6QP
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Melissa Bond is narrative journalist and poet. In the years of her dependence on benzodiazepines, Melissa blogged and became a regular contributor for Mad in America. ABC World News Tonight interviewed her for a piece in January 2014. Melissa is a respected writer on the perils of over-prescribing benzodiazepines and has been featured on the podcasts Risk!, IGNTD, and The Addiction Podcast. Learn more at MelissaABond.com.