More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Elizabeth Wurtzel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 27, 2001

"I crush up my pills and snort them like dust. They are my sugar. They are the sweetness in the days that have none. They drip through me like tupelo honey. Then they are gone. Then I need more. I always need more.

For all of my life I have needed more."

A precocious literary light, Elizabeth Wurtzel published her groundbreaking memoir of depression, "Prozac Nation," at the tender age of twenty-six. A worldwide success, a cultural phenomenon, the book opened doors to a rarefied world about which Elizabeth had only dared to dream during her middle-class upbringing in New York City. But no success could staunch her continuous battle with depression. The terrible truth was that nothing had changed the emptiness inside Elizabeth. Her relationships universally failed; she was fired from every magazine job she held. Indeed, the absence of fulfillment in the wake of success became yet another seemingly insurmountable hurdle.

When her doctor prescribed Ritalin to boost the effects of her antidepression medication, Elizabeth jumped. And the Ritalin worked. And worked. And worked. Within weeks, she was grinding up the pills and snorting them for a greater effect. It reached the point where she couldn't go more than five minutes without a fix. It was Ritalin, and then cocaine, and then more Ritalin. In a harrowing account, Elizabeth Wurtzel contemplates what it means to be in love with something in your blood that takes over your body, becomes the life force within you -- and could ultimately kill you.

"More, Now, Again" is an astonishing and timely story of a new kind of addiction. But it is also a story of survival. Elizabeth Wurtzel hits rock bottom, gets clean, usesagain, and finally gains control over her drug and her life. As honest as a confession and as heartfelt as a prayer, "More, Now, Again" recounts a courageous fight back to a life worth living.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her second book, Bitch, a discourse on self-destructive women, Wurtzel (Prozac Nation) admits to writing the manuscript while on drugs and then checking herself into rehab. In this memoir, she expands that admission to its extreme, minutely detailing life as a Ritalin addict and then as a rehab patient. But with its long stretches of descriptions about glass coffee-tables, tweezed leg hairs, missed phone calls and junkie buddies, this new book would have been more aptly titled "Prosaic Nation." Not only does Wurtzel tread on well-covered terrain about getting clean, she manages to add little or no insight either to her own habit or to the landscape of addiction in general. She's never figured out how to be a grown-up and do the little things like scrubbing a tub, she writes, "and remembering to eat and shampoo my hair. It's the basics: I can write a whole book, but I cannot handle the basics." Yet she fills this work with nothing but mere basics, like which cereals she eats, how she feels about television and how tough she finds life on a book tour. Even in rehab, that reliable bastion of craziness, the scenes are ordinary, washed out by Wurtzel's seeming lack of emotion. Indeed, throughout the book the author describes crying or worrying, but never seems to feel anything, so that when she has a surge of gung-ho self-esteem at the book's end, complete with a spiritual awakening, it rings false, a too hasty wrapup. Hardcore Wurtzel fans may find much to enjoy here, but the book's lack of depth and originality will check all but the most devoted. (Jan. 17)Forecast: The toned-down and boring jacket (compared with those of Wurtzel's previous books) and her lackluster writing won't do much for sales. More, Now, Again has scant chances of reaching new readers it just doesn't have the depth and insight of other works on addiction.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-An excellent, harrowing, horrifying book that YAs will identify with and remember. It's also one of the first lengthy accounts of prescription-drug abuse (for a time, Wurtzel crushed and snorted Ritalin every five minutes, which is increasingly popular among teens). More is thoroughly unglamorous ("I was not a cool drug addict") and often frankly disgusting; on speed, for example, the author began tweezing her legs and couldn't stop until she nearly hit bone; her legs became an infected mess of open sores. The last third of the book-on rehab, relapse, and recovery-is not as strong, but the preface and first chapter alone make More, Now, Again an important acquisition for a YA collection. Whatever her advantages (white, middle-class, Harvard grad, author of the best-selling Prozac Nation[Riverhead, 1995]), Wurtzel is not a "poor little rich girl" begging readers' pity or forgiveness. If anything, she courts their revulsion, while dragging them repeatedly (as she did her friends, doctors, and family) into the hellish world of addiction-deception, blood, desperation, vomit and all-more skillfully and memorably than anyone else.
Emily Lloyd, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (November 27, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743223306
• ISBN-13: 978-0743223300
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,351,892 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Why do you think they call it junk?, February 26, 2002

By 

Eric Krupin (Salt Lake City, UT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction (Hardcover)

Henry Miller wrote, "No one - not even God - knows what a man suffers on the inside." So I'll give Elizabeth Wurtzel, the human being, the benefit of the doubt and assume that her pain (whose nature is never made quite clear, but seems to have something to do with her mother not understanding her) is as authentic and deserving of our human sympathy as that of Diana Spencer (whose death Wurtzel mourns, "just because she was so pretty"), the World Trade Center victims (to whom Wurtzel is apparently indifferent, but who probably weren't that good looking on average), or, for that matter, you or me.

On the other hand, Elizabeth Wurtzel, the narrator of this book, had better hope that God loves her because it's not likely that too many other people will. (Her editor, who lets Wurtzel hole up in the publisher's offices during her terminal coke binge to insure the completion of her second book, doesn't count.) To describe her as "narcissistic" would be hopelessly inadequate. Enraptured self-involvement on this scale approaches the sociopathic. It would be one thing if the self being celebrated were a writer as insightful and masterly as, say, Colette. But when the best you can muster is urban-zingy wisecracks, not infrequently plagiarized from rock lyrics (note to Wurtzel: if you're going to rip off a Paul Westerberg lyric - i.e. "waitress in the sky" - it's not very smart to epigraph your chapter with another Paul Westerberg lyric), the result is pretty pathetic.

"More, Now, Again" does represent an artistic advance for the authoress, inasmuch as her photograph appears on the back cover rather than the front, and that she doesn't appear nude in it. (It is a large color photograph that takes up the entire back of the dust jacket, and she does pout rather come-hitherly in it, but still.) But how well can you identify with an addiction narrative when hitting bottom consists of - I swear I'm not joking - sleeping through an opportunity to do a photo shoot for Coach bags?

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jonesing Reader demands More, right Now, AGAIN!, June 11, 2002

By 

Lili Love (Beverly Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction (Hardcover)

With More, Now, Again, Elizabeth Wurtzel surpasses her premiere best seller, Prozac Nation. Wurtzel, still battling depression, initally receives a small dose of Ritalin to improve her concentration and mood. And it works, at first. The problem starts when Lizzie likes the Ritalin a little too much and plunges headlong into the smarmy world of addiction with all of its repulsive correlates. The addict's desperation along with her brilliant manipulations lucidly, with tongue fully in cheek, depicted here.
Wurtzel does not glamorize addiction -- to the contrary, she almost excoriates herself upon the alter of versilimitude. Although some readers may find the graphic nature of addiction too foreign or too incomprehensible, other readers will be thankful for her courage in writing about her struggles so candidly. Ultimately, Wurtzel redeems herself by slyly poking fun at herself and winking at the astute reader.
Amazingly, Lizzie, even while tweaking, (or later, sober, recalling)is able to access with surgical precision the desperation, compulsiveness and the damage done. Her (often) entirely self-serving motives and concurrent self-mockery are comical, a needed respite in a book of this nature. Similarly, the meta-conversations between Lizzie, another person, along with Lizzies unspoken *real* thoughts lend humanity and humor to the character's struggles and the author pulls them off brilliantly.
Elizabeth Wurtzel is extraordinarily talented, and More, Now, Again is her finest work (IMHO).... Thing is, Lizzie, you've left me (high and dry) and *jonesing* for your next tome. So please, get writing, Now! I want More! And so do it Again! (wheels turning round and round, he goes black jack, do it again --Steely Dan)

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars puhleese, April 11, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction (Hardcover)

This woman would be pitiful if she were not so apallingly arrogant. She is genuinely sick; however, one cannot feel sorry for her in the face of her meanspirited remarks. She has had every advantage, yet she obviously learned nothing at Harvard. She boasts that she is the leading non-fiction writer of her generation and that she is the 'prettiest girl she knows." This is good because no one else thinks so. She may have a ph.d. in the reader's digest or in junk food, but she certainly is not worldly, knowledgeable or scholarly. I haven't read one good review of any of her books. How in heaven's name could this sloppy work have been published? The publishers were evidently high as well. I feel sorry for the poor trees that sacrificed their lives for the paper.