Linda crew accidental addicts

  • Linda Crew tells her story of physical dependence on Xanax and Opiates in a way that no one else other than a writer could.
  • Linda Crew has written a compelling and bravely honest memoir of her struggle and recovery from the aftereffects of legally prescribed narcotic painkillers and.
  • Accidental Addict is the story of how it all went down—the white, middleclass, “nice-lady,” pharmaceutically-induced trainwreck of my life.

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    My early books were for young readers, and perhaps my best-known is my first, Children of the River. Set against the backdrop of the Cambodian refugee crisis of 1979, it’s still used in schools and English-as-a-second-language classes across the country twenty-nine years since publication. My two most recent—Brides of Eden: a True Story Imagined and A Heart for Any Fate: Westward to Oregon 1845—were published as cross-over titles, and I suspect have been read by more adults than teenagers. Brides of Eden is now available for the first time as an ebook and also in a new paperback edition containing all the orginal vintage photos. With my newest book, Wedding in Yangshuo, I deliver a memoir that both explains the inspiration for my first book, Children of the River, while also revealing the ongoing impact the research, writing, and publication of this book has had on my personal life and the lives of my loved ones. You can read it as a companion book to Children of the River, a travel

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    Accidental Addict

    Crew (A Heart for Any Fate, 2015, etc.) shares an agonizing konto of prescription drug dependence and withdrawal in this memoir.

    The author had knee replacement surgery in 2012, and the oxycodone prescription she received afterward seemed like an effective tool for coping with post-surgery pain. Yet she soon observed that she wasn’t recovering as quickly as she had hoped; she suffered from strange toothaches and struggled to muster enough energy to get through the day. Despite never taking a pill outside of what her doctors prescribed, Crew says, she had become addicted to painkillers. She weaned herself off of oxycodone, as well as antianxiety, antidepressant, and antimigraine medications—all prescribed bygd well-intentioned doctors but interacting, she says, in ways that proved disastrous for her physical and mental health. Crew struggled for years afterward with post-acute-withdrawal syndrome, in which withdrawal symptoms persist long after drug consumption

  • linda crew accidental addicts

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    Photo credit: Holly Peterson, The Ball Studio




    Linda Crew is the award-winning author of nine novels and now, two memoirs--one, a harrowing accoung of the perils of physician-prescribed drugs, and the latest focusing on her childhood, her marriage, and the wedding of her son, which necessitated a life-altering trip to one of the most beautiful and exotic corners of China. Her readers range in age from children who enjoy the Nekomah Creek books to adults who have appreciated her recent cross-over titles such as Brides of Eden: A True Story Imagined, and A Heart for Any Fate: Westward to Oregon 1845. She and her husband live in her hometown of Corvallis, Oregon, at Wake Robin Farm, where they were married under the oak trees forty-nine years ago. When not writing, she enjoys working on their forest properties.

    "Crew's prose flows smoothly across the page, inflected with wonderful details about the forests that form the backdrop of her characters' lives."