More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction

Rating:
Summary: What A Drag.......
Review: I became a "fan" of Wurtzel's, as did many others, after "Prozac Nation" was published. I dutifully read "B*tch", following the twists and turns of her Ritalin-addled brain. I avoided "More, Now, Again" when it was released because I just had a feeling that it would be bad.....After reading the book last night (yes,....it is a one-nighter) I realized what this feeling stems from. No longer a college freshman with romantic ideas about depression and substance abuse, I have simply outgrown Wurtzel. The book is interesting in that we see how she lives while writing "B*tch," which explains a lot about that particular book. As with "Prozac Nation", I love the way she begins each section with a snippet of song or poetry (and the Gordon Gano that begins the tale is right on the mark.) In the end, Wurtzel is like a smart but self-destructive ex-boyfriend: She likes great music (I love the way she writes about Bob Dylan), can talk about good books and makes you feel a little better about your own life but the relationship is just not very much fun.

Rating:
Summary: Another crazy rich woman with talent
Review: I picked up a remaindered copy of Elizabeth Wurtzel's More, Now, Again, a memoir of her addiction to Ritalin. I was curious about this book, because the author of Prozac Nation clearly knows that the Ritalin subculture is just as messed up as the Prozac one (if not more. Wurtzel writes beautifully, though I can't help wondering why so many rich, well-educated women become depressed, cut themselves, shoplift, and court addiction. Is it endemic in the life-style as well as the genes? Do poor women also manifest this kind of behavior?

Wurtzel's NY-based psychiatrist precribed Ritalin to help Wurtzel concentrate. Unbeknownst to her psychiatrist, Wurtzel began snorting Ritalin while she was living in her mother's Florida condo and writing her second book, Bitch. While Wurtzel was living in Florida, her psychiatrist had W's Ritalin Fed-Exed to her. The naive doc accepted Wurtzel's lame excuses for the disappearance of too many pills before her prescription was up.

Wurtzel's writing is absolutely stunning, but after awhile (50 pages or so) I became impatient with her sadness and her addiction and squandering of her talent . Here's the dreadful truth: she probably does have a personality disorder that makes her unable to function. So she writes pages and pages of beautiful, sorrowful prose about an absolutely repugnant life-style. I don't know whether to recommend this book or not. I really admire the writing, but... anyway, I'll err on the side of generosity and assign the book four stars.

Rating:
Summary: more more more!
Review: I'd actually give this book 3 1/2 stars. It's not as good as Prozac Nation but is still a good read. Some of the people who give this book a bad rating have obviously failed to actually read the book because they don't have their facts straight and are taking things out of context. I guess they have nothing better to do than to talk sh*t on something they don't understand. I often relate to what Wurztel says and she reminds me of some of the troubled females I know. I've had people make fun of me for reading this "chick book". I wouldn't call it that. It's a good book to read if you want to get in the mind of an addiction proned, emotionaly unstable, interesting woman.

Rating:
Summary: not as good as Prozac Nation, but worth reading
Review: The selling point of this book is the question 'what happened to Elizabeth Wurtzel after Prozac Nation?' The short answer is that her depression never really went away, she was prescribed Ritalin, became addicted, took to snorting it, moved on to a coke addiction, failed at rehab, but (she claims) managed to give up with Narcotics Anonymous.

I notice reading reviews that depressives and former depressives like me seem to prefer Prozac Nation, while addicts and former addicts prefer this book. Maybe it's what you can relate to. Nonetheless, I think Prozac Nation is better written and more self-aware than More, Now, Again. Too much of MNA reads like long almost unedited passages from her diary. PN reads as a memoir written from memory, so the uninteresting details have been cut out.

But I don't agree with critics who have trashed this book, saying that Wurtzel is a bad writer and someone undeserving of sympathy or attention. She can write very evocatively, and does so particularly in the first part where she describes her descent into addiction (I agree with the view that the book goes downhill once she goes into rehab).

What really annoys me is the idea that Wurtzel is undeserving of sympathy because she's rich and lives in a Manhattan loft. Money doesn't buy happiness and I have to say that anyone who can't sympathise with Wurtzel's misery simply lacks any psychological insight (I'm a psychologist). Wurtzel is indeed extraordinarily self-absorbed, but the fact I wouldn't be able to cope with her if I were one of her friends (how does she keep them the way she treats them?) doesn't mean that I can't care about her plight. Wurtzel's problem is that although the unexamined life is not worth living, her overexamined life is even worse.

It's not quite the case that PN was about depression and MNA is about drug addiction. There was a lot of drug abuse (if not addiction) in PN and there's a lot of depression in MNA. Wurtzel is a terribly unhappy person. She took cocaine as a respite from her depression. If you are simply dreadfully unhappy, it fills your life and you think about it all the time. Depression has ruined her life. Even though writing about her problems has superficially brought her a lot of success, it hasn't solved the fundamental problem that her experience of life is terrible. It's not sensible for people who haven't had those kind of problems to criticise her character and morals because they clearly don't appreciate what she is telling us. I doubt very much that they would be such paragons if they felt the way she does.