A courageous collection that explores the highs and lows of addiction

Addiction. In its earliest incarnation, the word meant devotion to a habit or pursuit. It has since come to mean the continued, compulsive use of a potentially dangerous substance or behaviour. In the Middle Ages, addiction was seen as a sin, a deep moral failing. Today, many prevailing theories characterize it as a disease. Popular culture has always flirted with addiction, depicting it as glamorous and racy, the territory of thrill-seekers, criminals, artists and daring outsiders of various kinds.

Whatever its roots, addiction has powerful physical and emotional consequences. It can shatter lives, tear families apart, drive people to suicide or financial ruin. Conversely, some have seen it as a source of inspiration and a doorway to deepened perception. What is this craving that comes to overpower all else? What is it like to be the grip of an addiction, and how does it feel to get straight or sober?

For the first edition of this book, editors Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane posed these questions to some of Canada's leading writers, and the result was a witty, courageous collection that garnered widespread praise and attention. This second edition blends the best of the original contributions with new pieces from some outstanding American voices.

All are personal accounts of battles with alcohol, heroin, smoking, food, gambling and sex. Some contributors still battle their habits; others have managed to defeat them; two lost their lives to addiction's ravages. This is a book about compulsion, recovery, and struggle. With its refreshing honesty, poignant soul-searching and dazzling writing, it is a potent concoction that will have readers hooked from the very first page.

Contributors: From the first edition: Canadians Patrick Lane, Peter Gzowski, Evelyn Lau, David Adams Richards, John Newlove, Stephen Reid. New contributors from the U.S.:

Susan Cheever: on sexual addiction. Since 1980, Susan Cheever has published five novels, a biographical study, and four memoirs including Note Found in a Bottle, a book about drinking published in 1999, and the best-selling Home Before Dark, a memoir about her father. Her most recent work is My Name is Bill, a biography of Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Cheever has written for many publications including The New Yorker and The New York Times; she currently writes a column for Newsday on topics ranging from parenting and politics to the arts.

Molly Jong-Fast: on being a teenaged junkie. Jong-Fast is the twenty-six-year-old author of the novel Normal Girl (currently being made into a feature film with a script by Bret Easton Ellis), and a memoir, Girl (Malajusted), that chronicles her experiences growing up in the decadent netherworld of New York's jet set. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, W magazine, Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, Marie Claire, The Times (London), British Elle, and Forward. Her mother is bestselling author Erica Jong; her father is screenwriter Jonathan Fast.

Rick Whitaker: on gambling. Whitaker, a former publishing assistant to literary editor Gordon Lish, is the author of Assuming the Position: A Memoir of Hustling, and The First Time I Met Frank O'Hara: Reading Gay American Writers. He first wrote about his gambling obsession for the New York Times magazine and confesses in this new piece that his addiction is not yet cured.