I am watching Girl, Interrupted, the film based on the book by Susanna Kaysen – an autobiographical story, and at the same time I am reading More, Now, Again by Elizabeth Wurtzel because even though I’ve read and seen both before and read the book by Kaysen as well, I have never seen them together and for some reason, on this day, this seems important, if not critical to any meaningful analysis of the two.
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to be a drug addict or, as Wurtzel writes, then read her book and you’ll know in a heartbeat the instant love and attachment that one can so easily form to the right drug at the right time (or the wrong drug at the wrong time, depending on your viewpoint). That wanting a drug so badly, as clearly she has, is for certain, a form of Love if not the only form of love that truly matters.
Elizabeth Wurtzel, from the backflap of her book More, Now, Again.
In Wurtzel’s case, the drug is Ritalin – Ritalin ground into a fine, white powder, chopped into thin lines and laid out on glossy, black book covers (that seem tailor-made for such snorting) and then, whoosh, up the nose. Methylphenidate, the thing everyone is after and that gives you that supreme focus and ability to churn out endless stories and do research for hours, but as Wurtzel found out, also is non-discriminating and will have you focusing on the most mundane of things, wasting hours, if not days of your life. You may well find yourself, as she did, in your bathroom under a bright, fluorescent light, plucking away at your leg hairs singularly with a tweezer because it seems like the thing to do. You may also find yourself digging and digging with that tweezer until you wind up in the E.R. with a serious and oozing wound that has gone untended and turned several shades of green because you just can’t leave it alone and I understand this. I really do. I once spent hours bleaching every white surface in the house when I first got on Ritalin and that was for legitimate use, taken as prescribed. I just couldn’t get over how un-white the whites were, so I made it my business to make friends with the Clorox. In fact, I bleached so much of the house that I passed out in the bathroom from the fumes and saw bright, sparkly blue stars but none of this mattered at the time. All that mattered was that the house be clean and white and sparkly. Yes – very sparkly.
Having been on Ritalin for a good part now of my life, I know all too well the effect is has on the mind and the psyche. I know that when I take my Ritalin as I am supposed to and am a good little girl, I am able to focus and stay awake and do my work like a normal person, but read here like a normal person because for me, Ritalin, alas, does not get me high, but just makes me normal because without it, I would sleep all day long from narcolepsy, which somehow they believe is related to my epilepsy. Who has ever heard of a narcoleptic-epileptic who when she isn’t seizing, is sleeping? It’s absurd. It sounds like a bad joke, almost a dirty joke. There was the bleaching incident on the first day, but after that, Ritalin has left me remarkably calm and normal. I simply stay awake like I am supposed to and am able to focus like anyone else – no better, no worse.
Article comments
1 - Eric Berlin
Wow -- thanks for this impressive (and impressively long!) review, Sadi.
Please consider breaking up future lengthy reviews into two or more posts (this one clocks in at a hefty 4,400 + words), which will likely draw a higher readership for a Web readership.
2 - sadi
Dear Eric:
My apologies; the piece just went on as long as it did, and needed that much space. IN the future, though, i will break it up into two pieces. i see your point. i apologize. it's never been a problem in the past, or not that i've been told - E.O.- do you want me to do this? Let me know. I"ll do whatever makes you happy. So, Olsen, please let me know which you prefer.
Thanks for the comments and the good point. I'll take it up with Eric O. for his input as well and take it from there.
Cheers, and be well,
Sadi
3 - Eric Olsen
Sadi and Eric, in the very broadest sense, shorter seems to be better on the Internet in order to hold people's attention: short paragraphs, short posts, etc. Knowing this has been really good for me because I have always tended to be long-winded and just know I can't on the net.
But that's a generality and sometimes it has to be long to say what you want to say!
4 - sadi
hmmm. okay, well, as you know, E, i tend to write a bit long, but that said, i will try try try to be briefer. yes, shorter is better on the internet. but as you said, sometimes it takes more time to say what you want to say. Perhaps E.B's idea of breaking it up is the best way to approach it. i think if it has to be long, then i can break it up as he suggests. I hope this didn't ruin the piece though - I was sort of into this one, though it didn't get much attention. maybe i was off here, but i liked this one more than most for whatever freaky reason. sometimes, weird things just appeal. anyway, thanks for the help and all. as ever, yours - sade
5 - Eric Olsen
this is powerful and exceptional and needs the space it takes to say what it says
6 - Eric Olsen
I wouldn't sell yourself short against these two ditsy knuckleheads, by the way!
7 - Mark Saleski
i like the longer entries. i print 'em out and take them home to read later.
of course, i've still got that 'printed matter fetish'/luddite thing goin on.
8 - sadi
thanks, Eric and Mark - i appreciate the comments and the vote of confidence as ever. this piece took a while to write and was fun for me... i enjoyed it a great deal as an analytical piece. apologies for length but as you said, it took the length it took. still, might be worth breaking up in the future. we'll see. glad you liked it though. i thought it was one of the better posts i have on here - so that's rare for me to say that. i never really like my work a whole lot, but this one just appealed and had a good energy, i thought. i'm glad you enjoyed it but again, i do get Eric B's point abuot length. I teach web writing so i do know etc etc.
anyway - thanks for taking the time...
cheers and be well all. more to come soon.
love,
sadi
9 - Barry
You know, Sadi, the only thing I could possibly critique about your review is that I feel I'd rather read you than the authors you review. Many years ago I read Wurtzel's "Prozac Nation": no doubt the writing was affected by the fact that she was still very much caught up in her addiction and unable to see her way out, which led to a certain lack of prespective. Maybe that has changed if, as you say, she's now clean.
On disillusionment, I remember back in my 20's talking with others who were similarly disillusioned with what the job had to offer us: we had all done the good thing of going off to University to be trained up for our shining careers and then came out to find the shininess concealed a lot of shittiness, and didn't bring the kind of relationships we'd been hoping for. Dumb stuff, really, when I think about the intervening years, and the events you write so eloquently of - who could come through them without having a major crisis of faith, if they'd had any kind of faith to start with?
10 - sadi
wow, Barry, i'm speechless. i think your comment is among the finest i have ever received. that you would rather read me than the authors i review, you say. well, let's hope my agent feels the same way and that a publisher does too. certainly, i've done well, but i aim so very high. i aim, like Wurtzel, to the New Yorker as well and feel i could do just as good a job, but perhaps that is vanity, no doubt it is. But to have another person say that is an entirely different thing, for i also have a deep and nagging insecurity that holds me back.
comments like yours and some others here through the ages have given me the confidence to pursue my writing in a far more aggressive fashion than ever before. i find myself writing new books and approachign my agent with a force that i never had. More, i find that my writing itself has picked up a voice and a tone that it was lacking in the past. That while i hate that word "voice" i also know that we each have to find our subject and it is through Blogcritics and some other venues, but mostly here, that i have been able to develop that subject and thank god, people have been so very receptive and interested and full of mostly kind words and the best part to me, they have read things that have helped them or that they relate to and thus, feel less alone, less isolated.
That has always been my goal; if i can just touch that one person, then i have succeeded, i always said. here, i feel i have done more than that and what could be better. This outlet has truly allowed me to develop and that's something one never forgets.
let's not ever underestimate the great level of generosity it has taken eric olsen to put this area together for us to just rant and rave and say what we want and all basically for free. god, we should ALL send him a ten or a twenty every year at least just to help with the hosting costs because they've been out of pocket. I"m not a hawker for anyone here, don't misunderstand; i just feel so grateful to have this arena to speak and i think we forget that sometimes. Yes, we have our own sites, but Blogcritics has developed a thing all its own and a wide audience. aren't we so lucky to have that readership?
So, thank you for me and thank you for making my day, my month, possibly giving me the courage to move forward with a book i'm doing at the moment, and while i'm on my soapbox, a-hem, thanks to Eric Olsen for everything he has done to make this possible and for my own part, to giveme the space to sound off on practicallly anything. What could be better than that... So much talent has grown here. I'll never forget who has made it possible for us to be read and seen...
cheers to all,
sadi
(ps. pardon typos).
11 - Eric Olsen
we all have insecurities of some sort: I believe the key is to learn to behave as if we don't - you become what you pretend to be
12 - Eric Berlin
Great point, Eric -- I think about the end of A Beautiful Mind sometimes. If Nash can ignore the British dude and the little girl who don't exist and win a Nobel, I can... etc.
13 - Eric Olsen
excellent example E, thanks
14 - sadi
that's right. both of you. and JOhn Nash is someone i've written a great deal about, for i admire him tremendously. A lot of the time, it is mind over matter, though for Nash, he had to first learn that he was truly sick and that yes, one could be both brilliant and to use a pejorative term, "mad". To me, he was simply ill and like any illness, that requires some treatment. An illness that affects the brain can be both good and bad - i know that for me, my epilepsy allows me to see and do things i would never imagine possible were it not for the epilepsy, though at the same time, without it, there are ways of being that i will never know and i often wish i did know what it is like to just be "normal" so to speak.
That said, as Van Gogh wrote, it was his epilepsy that allowed him to "go out at night and paint the stars..." Imagine if he had not had it. Had not painted the stars. We'd have no 'Starry, starry night', no song by Donavan, no great painting, and so on.
For Van Gogh, alas, he was never recognized in his lifetime. It's time that changed and that people with this kind of illness are seen for what they are in their own lifetimes - and Nash is the perfect example, yes. He won the Nobel as you say, which, by the way, is named after Afred Nobel who was, for the record, a temporal lobe epileptic also (same as me). Interesting.
Thanks for bringing this up. Excellent point...
ciao Erics..
Sadi
15 - mika ronen
I am just reading "more, now, again" for the 4 time I think. I'm not a native English speaker and this is the longest book I have read more than once.
This time the reading experience was hampered by some personal experiences. But the writing is still captivating and wins you over even if you despise women taking part in adulterous relationships, or envy the amount of money Wurzel has even after spending a fortune on an insane life style.
After reading her huge list of thank you's, I envy wurtzel's talent less than I used to. Maybe she credits everyone but herself because of low self esteem, but it does give you the feeling that with a good editor anyone can be an amazing writer.
But sadi- you are something else. Don't mind those who say the piece is too long. It's too short. Sometimes, when I come across a piece of stunning internet writing I start seeing each line as if it was highlighted of underlined. Maybe I too have a weird form of epilepsy.
My only suggestions for further discussion are- should the nuclear family be sanctified at all cost, and where does the border between self fulfillment and pure selfishness lie. But these small disagreement did not stop me from tearing up while reading.
I'll be looking out for more of your stuff and hope the last two and a half years have done you justice.
16 - diana
This was a great read. Yes, it was long, but it was a great read I will recommend. I don't care that it was a review/epiphany. I only care about what I read.
17 - Christopher Rose
Hi Diana,
Totally agree, a great read.
I miss seeing you and Sadi around the place, which is the poorer for your absence.