Ninety Days: A Memoir of Recovery [Hardcover]

Bill Clegg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 2012

The goal is ninety. Just ninety clean and sober days to loosen the hold of the addiction that caused Bill Clegg to lose everything. With six weeks of his most recent rehab behind him he returns to New York and attends two or three meetings each day. It is in these refuges that he befriends essential allies including Polly, who struggles daily with her own cycle of recovery and relapse, and the seemingly unshakably sober Asa.

At first, the support is not enough: Clegg relapses with only three days left. Written with uncompromised immediacy, NINETY DAYS begins where Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man ends-and tells the wrenching story of Clegg's battle to reclaim his life. As any recovering addict knows, hitting rock bottom is just the beginning.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Clegg follows his gut-wrenching Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man with an equally stark tale of the hard and ongoing work of recovering from addiction." (Booklist Vanessa Bush)

"Clegg's spare, nearly minimalist style complements the drama inherent in his material: it's addition through subtraction. . . .With understated craft, Clegg has written a harrowing story." (Publishers Weekly)

"Standing out among the many similar works on addiction and recovery, Clegg's intellectual story of his never-ending struggle for sobriety and his heartfelt, passionate revelations will directly touch the hearts of readers. His personal perspective also nicely supplements the many helpful guides to addiction recovery from professional therapists that target the friends and family members of addicts." (Library Journal)

"This sequel is about [Clegg's] recovery - the circular pattern of stupefyingly tedious rehab and harrowing relapse. And yet it's suspenseful: We come to care about Clegg, whose voice is engaging and who never gets mired in self-pity." (National Post)

"[Clegg] tells the story in plain, innocence-drenched sentences that bring to mind the wonderful Edmund White, as if to adorn the events would be dishonest. It is a bedtime story for adults, filled with first names only-Jack and Polly, Jane and Jean, Asa and Madge, Luke and Annie. A soothing and intimate book, and we hope Clegg has found peace at last." (The Daily Beast)

About the Author

Bill Clegg is a literary agent in New York. He is also the author of Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (April 10, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316122521
• ISBN-13: 978-0316122528
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #216,977 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Whatever you know about addictions, NINETY DAYS will broaden your knowledge and understanding May 14, 2012

By Bookreporter

Format:Hardcover

"That craving, once it begins, is almost impossible to reverse... It's like Bruce Banner as he's turning into the Incredible Hulk. Once his muscles begin to strain against his clothes and his skin goes green, he has no choice but to let the monster spring from him and unleash its inevitable damage."

This is one of the many insights into the disease of addiction that Bill Clegg reveals to his readers as he describes the arduous journey he took to achieve his first 90 days of sobriety. Anyone not familiar with the phenomenon of substance abuse and its ramifications would find it difficult to understand how a person who has literally lost everything of value could even think of using again. In NINETY DAYS, Clegg candidly shares how and why such a relapse occurs, often more than once, even when the decision to remain sober has been made.

After more than three months in rehab, Clegg returns to New York where he plans to live in his brother's office during non-business hours. The rest of his time will be spent going to Twelve-Step meetings, working with the tools for living that he had been given in treatment, and trying to figure out how to salvage something from the wreckage that had become his life. He quickly learns that those folks he meets in the program, those "counting days," are sincerely eager to help newcomers, and he soon finds himself among sober friends. This is a new experience, the first among many to follow.

Despite acquiring a sponsor, a mentor who will help guide him on his journey, and despite some close friends he makes, the temptation to use is always lurking in the background. Jack, his sponsor, warns him to stay away from people, places and things that might trigger a relapse. These include areas of the city where he used to meet his dealers, streets that led to certain bars, boredom that would allow his mind to meander to those places, and the times of using that he remembers fondly.

Clegg's first relapse occurs when he is only 16 days away from his goal of 90. Anyone who is in recovery will have no problem understanding how an addict makes stupid choices. Those who have never been in recovery will either develop some sympathy or just want to slap the addict silly. In either case, the relapse occurs, followed by more problems and debts being added to the already impossibly high mountain. Then it's back to meetings, feeling like a fool joining the newbies, and once again accepting a 24-hour chip.

Clegg develops his own character as he recounts the stories of others in his new circle of friends, those who have been successful at achieving sobriety and those who, like him, are caught up in the cycle of relapse and recovery. He learns to be more honest with himself and his motives, and finds that things actually do work out better when faced rather than avoided or covered up. Still, he cannot shake a common feeling among those in recovery: that of being an outsider, an alien among people who belong and who know what to do and how to behave appropriately. "I look around from sober face to sober face and wonder again how these people found their way. How will I?"

Whatever you know about addictions, NINETY DAYS will broaden your knowledge and understanding. There are no excuses or minimizing of the problems; Clegg opens himself up as is necessary for long-term recovery. There is only one caveat regarding this book. I would probably not recommend it to anyone in early recovery because those very triggers that caused Clegg to relapse several times may tend to affect them as well.

Reviewed by Maggie Harding

16 of 22 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Incredible Disappointment *SOME MILD SPOILERS* April 11, 2012

By Kevin

Format:Hardcover

I absolutely loved Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man--it was harrowing, it threw the reader into each moment, and achieved a sense of coherence even within its chaos. The author didn't include any "writerly" self-awareness in that book, because it wasn't necessary; it was simply the telling of a drug-fueled story as he recalled it.

Ninety Days, however, suffers from a complete and utter lack of self-awareness even after the author is well into recovery, and the book fails as a result. The author is self-pitying throughout (dramatically dropping to the ground, throwing lamps, screaming into the wind), but any awareness of his self-pity registers only through others' observations, not his own self-realization or growth. In "Portrait," he was somewhat annoyingly woe-is-me, but that was acceptable because he was getting high the entire time so there was almost no breathing room for analysis of his character. Now, even during his moments of clarity/not using (not to mention that he should have achieved some growth during the 5 years between hitting his "90 days" and finishing the book), he is just a cry-baby about everything that HE caused. For example, he's upset that Asa doesn't show up to his 1-year meeting, yet he fails to have any self-awareness to understand that it's because he seduced Asa and then dropped him when he met Elliot (with whom he started a relationship even though everyone, sponsors included, told him not to--a choice that he "[doesn't] regret," even with the writerly distance, which further shows his lack of awareness). If he had any real revelations, or any genuine discussion of himself (aside from the basic recitation of the events), the reader would be drawn in. What we're left with, instead, is a remarkably self-pitying (even to this day), remarkably unaware, narrator...one who, at the end, tries to convince the reader that HIS path to sobriety is the way to go, even as he states, in the last pages, that he's essentially a slave to co-dependency for the rest of his life. The author hasn't learned much since the first book, no matter how many repetitive descriptions of meetings and relapses he includes. And the writing style is so all-over-the-map that it makes one wonder if he had an editor; he switches tenses for no discernible reason and jumps back and forth in time within a given sentence so frequently that some of the passages don't make any sense, even after repeated readings. He employed a similar style in "Portrait," but, as with the lack of awareness in that book, it complemented the content of that book. Here, it just reads as sloppiness.

Overall, a huge, insufferable (even at 191 pages in what appears to be 20-point font) disappointment.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Escaping Addiction June 24, 2012

By The Paperback Pursuer

Format:Hardcover

Description:

Ninety Days is the true story of Bill Clegg's recovery - crack addicted to clean and sober. This memoir is the follow-up to his first book , Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man, and begins where it left off - after seventy-three days of rehab.

Review:

A raw and highly emotional look into the life of a once prominent businessman and his strenuous journey to sobriety, Ninety days is an intense, yet simply-written, look into recovery from addiction. It feels like I am reading Clegg's journal, and the entries have a lot of impact. His writing style is honest and full of poignant prose, his ordeal a glimpse into a torment of the human condition. The interactions and dialogue are well-written, but the sections about his relapse(s) are some of the most engrossing. I am very moved by his story, however, I feel like Ninety Days should be read after Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man, because it feels sort of incomplete alone. Recommended for those who have struggled with their own addictive behaviors and/or readers interested in the drug rehabilitation process; also appropriate for older teens.

Rating: Bounty's Out (3/5)

*** I received this book from the author (Little, Brown and Company) in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.