"Postcards from the Edge" and "Cracked" - book reviews

"Postcards from the Edge" by Carrie Fisher

I had of course known that Carrie Fisher had fiction books that she'd written, very popular and successful ones at that. But I didn't go see the movie that was made out of one of them, and I never really had the inclination to read any of her books.

That is, until I saw Carrie during the Saturday night of Celebration IV, when she held a special event called "A Conversation with Carrie Fisher", in which she basically talked about various things and told various stories. After that, I thought I'd try out one of her books sometime, and I picked "Postcards from the Edge", her almost-biographical first novel. The book started slowly for me, when the lead character, Suzanne Vale, is having her stomach pumped after an accidental overdose and then goes into rehab. You learned a little about what brought her there and what she's had to deal with and what her quirks are. Then, inexplicably, you're thrown into the life of some guy who's obviously a hard-core and seriously-in-denial drug addict, and the action shifts between the two of them, culminating not surprisingly in their meeting when he enters the same rehab she's already in. I didn't care too much for his scenes and story, and frankly, I lost interest in the book and actually put it down for a little while. I *rarely* ever just stop reading a book. Eventually, I went back to it, and after Suzanne got out of rehab, she tried to get back into acting and there was various other drama that entered her life, and I found all of that to be much more interesting, and I ended up getting through the rest of the book much easier than during the beginning.

Generally, I liked the book, and Carrie has a bit of a quirky style, though of course, this was her first novel, and I'm not sure how much of her style was affected by it being mostly autobiographical. People may or may not know that she's been regarded as one of the best script doctors in the movie business for some time now. Somewhere down the line, I may decide to try one of her other novels, but her first one didn't speak to me enough to jump out and buy more of her novels right now.


"Cracked" by Dr. Drew Pinsky

I've been listening to Loveline on occasion over the past couple years, and I've really enjoyed listening to Dr. Drew Pinsky giving frank advice to people who call about every subject under the sun, but many relating to sex and addiction and abuse. He had talked about a book he'd written a while ago about his experiences working in a rehab hospital and how the book wasn't just about the patients, but it was about him as well. That intrigued me, so I picked up a copy of "Cracked: Putting Broken Lives Together Again - A Doctor's Story".

And it was merely coincidence that I read these two books one right after the other. It was kind of interesting to read the patient view of a particular type of rehab compared to the doctor's view of a slightly different kind of rehab.

You get a very clear idea of the different types of people who come into the Department of Chemical Dependency Services at Las Encinas Hospital in Pasadena, California. They're all medically addicted to a varying array of drugs, but what's most troubling about them isn't the medical addiction itself - it's often the trauma or circumstances which led them to the addiction in the first place. He introduces the patients and their background as well as the process of their detox and treatment, and he also tells you what he, the other doctors and the staff think of different patients. You see that sometimes, as much as the patient's family says they want the patient to get better, they're not willing to do the hard work to help make the patient better, which includes looking at themselves and how they've aided, abetted and sometimes, even encouraged the patient's continued addiction. There are a number of instances where so-called "well-meaning" family members actually hinder or sabotage the recovery process.

And because of everything Dr. Drew tells you about how he's feeling in various situations, you get exactly how difficult it is to be in a job like that. It's said that medical doctors and staff in a hospital/emergency environment have to maintain some kind of distance from their patients and remain stoic to some degree because there's no other way for them to survive the day-to-day traumas that they see and the patients that they're not able to save and the anguish and pain suffered by the surviving families. A similar sentiment can be made about doctors and staff who work in rehab facilities because of the failure rates that naturally occur, but they can't pull back to the same degree because part of the process involves dealing with the patients on a personal level. Dr. Drew talks about a few different cases where a patient was taught early on that he/she could never trust anyone, and with that reinforced during their years growing up, they were completely unable to connect with anyone, and many times, Dr. Drew had to try to be the first person that the patient could trust, could believe in, could connect with. If he could make that happen, the patient could possibly be on his/her way to forming more connections and moving along in recovery.

But Dr. Drew also experiences first-hand the pitfalls between trying to make that connection and becoming too personally involved, which could prove detrimental to both the patient and himself. He almost cares too much, and the stories that he hears from every patient who enters the hospital tear him to pieces when he hears about what the people have been subjected to, sometimes at very early ages, sometimes by the very people who were supposed to have been caring for and nurturing the patients. As much as we learn about the various patients, Dr. Drew lays his own feelings bare as well. One of the things I most liked about this book was that he was free to say what he wanted and how he wanted, without the constraints of what he can do on Loveline and because of the FCC.

This book was definitely a compelling read, and I breezed through it fairly quickly.


Dr. Drew has another book called "When Painkillers Become Dangerous" that I'm interested in reading for various reasons. First, I like his writing style (though I do know that "Cracked" was co-written by Todd Gold), so that's an incentive to read more by him. Second, I'm interested in learning about exactly how the addictions work on a medical and physiological level as well as the effects of various drugs on people. Lastly, since I'm currently wresting with whether or not I'm going to go back to a doctor to try to get a stronger pain medication that will actually work (since the ibuprofen appears to have lost its effectiveness with me again), I'm interested in knowing what other medications might be out there and the effects that all of them have. I'm getting the impression that my particular body chemistry wouldn't allow me to develop an addiction, so I'm not concerned about that, but I also have a feeling that my body won't let me take anything stronger than vicodin, which I've had before. I haven't yet been able to find the book on the shelf, mostly because it's been very confusing trying to figure out where Borders would shelf it even if they had it, so I may end up just ordering it.


If I wasn't cably-challenged, I would have definitely watched "Celebrity Rehab". I'm hoping that they'll release the series on DVD so that I can watch them, but I may have to settle for just the episodic downloads if they don't do a DVD. Dr. Drew has just started filming the second season of "Celebrity Rehab", which is scheduled to start airing in October.