And I remember the feeling of floating off under the ether and I loved that feeling. PEGGY HASSETT: …I was 10 and I remember that they gave you ether then. And for any who have wrestled with addiction, it is a discovery that they are not alone and that recovery is possible. For any who have not encountered addiction before, the hour is a frank and absorbing introduction. Through the candid testimony of people who have been there, Portrait of Addiction leaves little doubt that addiction can happen to anyone. Each person has had a unique experience with a range of addictive substances - from cocaine and heroin to alcohol and tobacco.ĭespite their differences, however, all have gone through a similar cycle of experience - from the first, ecstatic rush of a drink or drug, to “falling in love” with the sensation, to the realization that the pleasure has turned to pain and the frequent use into a compulsive, obsessive hunger for a chemical fix. Through a montage of intense interviews with nine people from various walks of life, Portrait of Addiction brings viewers face-to-face with the pain of addiction and the possibility of recovery. Le Guin and L’Engle first showed me that people with whom I had anything in common (they were both fierce, imaginative women both, at the time, were still alive) could write novels.In the first episode of Moyers on Addiction: Close to Home, the series begins with testimony from the real experts - recovering addicts. As a kid, I knew that a) this book was wild, b) it was more radical than any of the adults I knew seemed to be, and c) Le Guin wrote beautiful sentences, paragraphs, and scenes. Only when I reread the novel in my thirties did I understand, or begin to understand, the complexities of its gender politics. But I knew I’d entered different territory. The librarian didn’t comment or raise her eyebrows as she handed the book and my foxed cardboard library card back to me. No one stopped me, then or ever, from going into that room for novels, books on graphology, atlases, or catalogues of spells. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness came from the library’s Adult Fiction shelves. Yet even as I gobbled up those books, I understood them to have been written for children: age-appropriate, sanctioned in some regard. Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time series first drew me to science fiction.

Wanted by Kim Wozencraft