I wanted the motivation behind using, but at 23% in, we’re still talking about boyfriends and failed relationships. It was lacking any sort of depth; I struggled to care.

DNF at 23%

Erin Khar begins experimenting with drugs and heroin when she is thirteen. This book details her struggles with using heroin and other drugs on and off through her teens and twenties. She finally kicks it for good when she becomes pregnant. This book is important because it shows how hard it is to kick drugs, the lies addicts tell themselves, and that there is an ultimate chance of redemption and recovery for every addict.

I found it difficult to empathize with the author of this book. Honestly, she needed to go to therapy and she needed to learn coping skills. I am glad she found hope and recovery from addiction, but she still managed to lead a privileged life even during the depths of her addiction, and I found her very hard to like or care about.

She comes from a family with money. Her father buys her whatever she wants, and then she feels guilty about it, so she does drugs. She always has men in her life, often actors and musicians, but she feels unlovable, so she does drugs. There is much more of this self-perpetuating guilt and drug addiction throughout the book.

The author's problems stemmed from mental illness and she used drugs to cover it up. She suffered trauma in early childhood and she suffered through deep depression and suicidal thoughts. She never really deals with these issues in the book. She never learns how to deal with problems like an adult. She reacts to obstacles by doing drugs and pushing people away. She decides it's better to be a drug addict than a crazy person.

This book should lead to good discussions about the effects of drug addiction on our country; I just don't think this is the right author to make the message really hit home with readers.

Strung Out is a raw, honest, and gripping memoir about the struggles a young woman faced throughout her life of addiction and recovery. Though I cannot personally myself relate to what she has gone through, I am connected to others who have faced addiction, so I can relate to many parts of her story from the outside looking in. I strongly feel this is a memorable story that begs to be voiced and shared to many, for I feel we all are connected to someone who has faced some type of addiction in some capacity, or may one day be.

I am so incredibly proud of Erin for sharing her life story with the world, and exposing her faults and mistakes for everyone to see. Most importantly is the true life lesson that though one might once be at rock bottom and contemplating suicide, life is not completely lost and over if you have some support, some love, some help, from someone, somewhere.

Reading her story had me feeling a myriad of emotions, which is a kudos to the writing, as I felt so connected to her and what was happening. I was intrigued and felt compelled to read on and find out what was going to happen to her next. The reading itself was easy and flowed smoothly, unlike many memoirs I have read in the past. The style was written in such a way that it did not read like a typical memoir or diary, but felt like a novel of fiction. Not only was her life one to be admired and commended because of how far she went, but she was able to tell and share her story in a way that exposed her talent of writing!

This is a brutally honest and deeply personal look inside opioid addiction. In this memoir, Erin Khar digs deeply into the personal, social and physical reasons for addiction.

Will probably order this for the library as it is unique. Good story showing the user's side of addiction and the consequences!

I had to remind myself that this book wasn't fiction. I had to remind myself that this happened.

I cannot begin to imagine what it takes to strip yourself bare and show the world who you are and where you came from and what almost happened to you, but I know this: it took courage.

Strung Out is unbelievably sad and honest and I can only hope that if even one person who reads this book sees some part of their own life mirrored in these pages, they will realize a beautiful truth. No one is beyond help or unworthy of help or undeserving of help.

Thank you, Ms. Khar, for your story.

This book was very interesting and easy to read. The author told the story perfectly. Some authors give way too many details, not so with this author.

This book is not for everyone. It is an emotional roller coaster depicting the abuse suffered by the author. Her brutally honest portrayal of addiction is insightful and disturbing. Not for everyone, but this book could help those who are caring for a loved one who is dealing with addiction so they can better understand the struggle.

This book was a great memoir. I really liked how it turned out in the end. You can feel the authord pain and trauma that she was feeling growing up. You can understand how certain situations when Erin was younger brought her to where she was at 16,17,18,19. This story has a great ending,and i would reccomend this book.

Erin Khar writes this memoir about her addiction to heroin. An important story about addiction and recovery, but Khar's writing style is more adult than other addiction memoirs. Teen readers may struggle to relate to Khar's wealth and it's role in her addiction.

I've read a lot of addiction memoirs, and there are definitely ones that are better suited for teens. While Khar's book is fine for teen readers, content wise, it doesn't have the written appeal of Nic Sheff's works.

WOW! I read Strung Out in just a couple of days. This powerfully raw memoir about Erin Khar's life experience being addicted to drugs and how it controlled her life after a childhood trauma and a continuing battle with mental illness was eye-opening. Erin laid it all out there for everyone to see, experience, and understand what happens to addicts once they start taking drugs. She described how the problem is multi-layered and can happen to anyone for various reasons.

Erin's resilience is inspirational. This should be read by everyone of all ages to show what an incredibly enormous problem this is and how quickly your life can change. Mental illness plays a huge part as well, and this shows what an issue we have as a society on the stigmatism of such illnesses.

Thank you Netgalley and Park Row for allowing me to read this book. I received this book for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.*

I was surprisingly impressed by this debut from Erin Khar. Strung Out is a memoir in the vein of Lit by Mary Karr, but aspects of it reminded me and had me gripped in the same way that Brain on Fire by Susannah Callahan did.

Erin Karr is approximately my age. She grew up with relative privilege, but with trauma and sexual abuse that are sadly all too common across all socio-economic backgrounds. I was unfamiliar with her blog and/or her Q&A advice column but I found her writing style honest and engaging. She is brutally real about her addictions and by laying herself bare she tells a cautionary tale as well as a tale of hope for those currently in the grip of opioid addition or for the loved ones of those in its grasp.

Aspects of her story were frustrating for me, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and will definitely look for more by Erin Khar.

*with thanks to NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for this honest review.

A disarmingly honest account of one woman's misspent youth via addiction and how she eventually got herself together to put it all behind her after much pain and damage. Highly recommend reading this book for a deeper understanding of how this can so easily happen to anyone. An ideal book list inclusion for those interested in addiction and its consequences, as well as a glimmer of hope, and well worth reading for those who just may be curious.

Thank you Netgalley and Publishers for granting me early access to "Strung Out".

I'm currently in the middle of a major move, and will definitely come back at a later time and write out a full review and rating.

Thank you so much!

This was a great book! It held my attention and I couldn't put it down, kept me awake at night because I just wanted to keep reading! It was an easy to follow along story and contained good easy to follow characters. I highly recommend this to anyone and can't wait to read more by this author. Thanks for the opportunity to read and review this.

Over 2 million people in America use illicit drugs and struggle with opiate addiction: every 11 minutes someone will die in a drug overdose, which is the leading cause of death for people under 55. Erin Khar’s “Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me” is a vivid and captivating account of her addiction to heroin, that began in her teens and continued well into adulthood.

Addiction, evil and relentless never discriminates between the rich and poor. Despite Khar’s “white privilege” and the protection afforded her from her parent’s wealth – none of these prevented her addiction, poor choices, unhealthy relationships where she was manipulated, exploited and abused by others. Khar suffered from depression and PTSD seemingly related to childhood molestation. Khar observed that the mentally ill are three times more likely to use drugs to cope with their problems. Khar often went to seedy areas where criminal activity flourished, and was very fortunate she wasn’t assaulted, robbed, arrested or worse.

After several attempts to get clean, and suffering a tremendous amount of guilt that led to severe mental anxiety following an abortion— Khar was able to remain drug free when she decided to carry another pregnancy to term and her son Atticus was born. According to Khar, good follow-up and aftercare are urgently needed to prevent relapse after treatment. The shame and stigma associated with substance abuse and addiction must be reconsidered and erased before more lives are lost; this is timely and important book.
Khar was able to finish her undergraduate degree, her award winning writing has been featured in many notable publications, she is also an advice columnist at Ravishingly. Khar lives in NYC with her husband and two children. Many thanks to ParkRowBooks.com via NetGalley for the DDC for the purpose of review.

I'm fortunate. I've been in a reasonable amount of pain at various points in my life. I've always figured most drugs increase your use of endorphins, which you need to fight your pain. You don't want to get used to the level of endorphins so that you have to try to increase them. So I've never been a heavy drug user. I easily could have been. Strung Out is a superb look at the how, why and what happens with addiction. A very good and worthwhile read!

Spoilers: It is interesting that I am reviewing Erin Khar’s Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me for this blog at the same time that I am reviewing The United States of Opioids by Harry Nelson for another site. Both books illustrate how large the Opioid Crisis has become and how it affects both society and the individual. The latter book is a dry fact based account of the Crisis and how it began as well as the various institutions and people that put the Crisis in motion. What it lacks is the personal and the individual case story of people with addictions. It sacrifices the details for the picture of the crisis at large.



Erin Khar's memoirs fills that need. It fills in the details and makes the Opioid Crisis personal. It tells the story of Khar's struggles with drug addiction as well as the mindset that led her down this path as well as her recovery from her addiction.



Khar, a radio advice columnist, was inspired to write this memoir after watching a news report on opioid addiction with her then-twelve-year-old son, Atticus. Atticus asked if his Mom ever had taken drugs. Khar was stunned at the question and hoped that she would never have this conversation with her son, so she could maintain his innocence. She explained why people became addicted and realized that she had to open up about her own past.



Khar writes the mindset of a person with an addiction really well. One way that she accomplishes that is by showing the reasons behind the addiction. Many people think that the addiction is the problem, full stop. When a person breaks their addiction, then they will be fine. Khar's writing shows that is not always the case.



Even before she first sneaked Darvocet from her grandmother's medicine cabinet, Khar was beset with problems that made her young life impossible. Her parents’ divorce along with her father's behavior in trying to buy her love with material possessions and her mother's involvement with an abusive boyfriend traumatized her. Khar had low self-esteem and even as young as four years old, she cut herself and held notions of suicide.



Throughout her young life, Khar derided herself as “ugly” and a “monster,” feeling insults from other children and rejection from boys deeply.

In a later chapter, Khar encountered an old family friend and had a panic attack. She remembered that he molested her when she was four years old and blamed herself ever since. These incidents reveal the lost soul that Khar was before she stole the Darvocet and injected heroin with her boyfriend at 13 and began an addiction that claimed her teen and young adult years.



Khar's book is graphic in its detail about her addiction and how it affected her friendships and romances. Through high school, Khar lived the exterior of the perfect A+ student who was a cheerleader, volleyball player, and horseback rider. In her spare time, she swallowed pills from friend's medicine cabinets, cut herself, took heroin, and slept with her boyfriend, Ted. Much of Khar's retreat into her addiction stemmed from her trying to act like the perfect student in front of everyone so she could hide the pain underneath. Readers with addictions and psychiatric disorders will completely understand this exhausting masquerade that they use to hide the lost soul underneath.



After her grandmother's death when she was fifteen, Khar withdrew from her egocentric father and depressed mother and explored the night life in ‘90’s downtown L.A. that involved her going to clubs, dating several unappealing men, and of course frequent drug use. She lost many of her friends and boyfriends. Ted and Khar broke up after Sam, Ted's cousin and another drug user that she was seeing on the side, died of an aneurysm. Her best friend Ellen, with whom Khar saw many rock bands, broke up with her after she spent too much time with another boyfriend, Ian. Ian, an older man, ended things with her because they were far apart in age (though Khar suspected that he was seeing someone else.). The breakups sent Khar in an even further downward spiral as she experimented with crystal meth and pills.



She dated a drug dealer named Mike-Jim (“He said his name was Mike, but really it was Jim or the other way around,” Khar said) so he could supply her with her new drug of choice,crystal meth. Another unstable boyfriend, Will admitted that he put thirty phenobarbital in her spaghetti after she broke up with him.

These chapters grimly show how each break up, each disappointment, and each instance of abuse and mistreatment can bruise an already fragile personality. To cope, sometimes a person with an addiction can use that as a reason to continue their addiction.



Even when she tried to find a fresh start, Khar was surrounded by her old demons. She spent some time in Paris attending Sorbonne University, going to cafés and museums, making new friends, and trying her best to break her addiction. She became involved with Vincent, a Frenchman, who eventually moved to Los Angeles with her. When she discovered that he hadn't broken up with his old girlfriend, he moved out and she relapsed back into heroin.



In 1997, during the height of the so-called “heroin chic” trend, Vincent and Khar’s mother forced her into rehab. While she tried to follow the twelve-step program to the letter and bonded with many of her fellow patients, her addiction was never truly far behind. A friend at the rehab overdosed during his release and she was too terrified of a relapse to go help him, sending her mother instead.

When she was caught between two men, she missed heroin and returned to the drug.



During a psychiatric session with her mother, Khar's PTSD from her earlier molestation was mentioned. Her mother's denial of the events sent Khar into depression and a return to cutting as well as the drugs.

It is truly heart-breaking to read about this woman travelling from place to place, friend to friend, lover to lover hoping to break her addiction. But the seemingly endless cycle continues and she once again finds herself alone and reaching for the needle or the bottle.



There are some truly chilling moments that reveal how a drug addiction can be unpredictable and frightening, to the point that a person with an addiction can't trust their own mind, body, or the people around them. During rehab, Khar hallucinated spiders crawling up and down her room.



After she and her friend, Diana, had shot up, Khar accidentally o.d.’ed, to the point that she almost died.

A pregnancy with Jack, a troubled boyfriend, ended in an abortion, but Khar continued the relationship because of the drug access they provided for each other. Khar knew the relationship was unhealthy (“The difference between us was that Jack was a drug addict and I was a mentally ill person who had an addiction,” Khar said), but stayed with him.



Many of Khar's transactions put her at the forefront of the socioeconomic gap and she realized that as a biracial woman from a wealthy family, she had advantages such as access to good rehab centers and treatment programs, that many of her fellow addicts and dealers did not.

She bought drugs from many people who were on the lower economic scale and were primarily black and Latino. She witnessed many of the unfair treatment they got such as harsher prison sentences or deportation while she and others of her background were given court appointed rehab.



In one haunting moment, Khar bought drugs from a 12-year-old African-American boy. She reasoned that a 12-year-old doesn't just wake up one day and decide to sell drugs. He sells them because he has no other options in the neighborhood in which he lives and is denied many of the employment, education, and health access that Khar had.



Khar finally kicked her addiction for good, when she was pregnant with her son, Atticus. However, many of the reasons behind her addiction such as low self-esteem and unhealthy relationships continued. Atticus’ father, Michael continued to hold her addiction over her head and refused to admit his infidelities causing Khar to solely blame herself for the end of their marriage. She also started a clothing line with a friend that fell apart so she avoided situations and her friendship ended for a time.



These last chapters reveal the end of the addiction is not the whole story, especially when the reasons behind the addiction remain. When she held Atticus for the first time, Khar repeated a mantra: I love him more than I hate myself realizing that she still had the capacity for love.



She began to make healthier choices like hanging out with better friends who encouraged her sobriety or had recovered themselves and acted as guides to aid her. She got involved with Yoga to help change her mindset and outlook. She found her gift for writing and took to blogging essays and an advice column, Ask Erin.(“She's made all the mistakes so you don't have to.”) She also fell in love with and married Seth and had a second child, Franklin finding stability and happiness in her family.



Erin Khar's book is brilliant at capturing not only a drug addiction, but the reasons and mindset that created the addiction and the resources, healing, and emotional support that one needs to make a full and complete recovery.

As I said on Twitter, books like this are why we have the word "harrowing". Really excellent addiction memoir, written clearly and without artifice. I especially liked how well Erin acknowledged her privilege.

I must give credit to anyone who successfully lives a life in recovery from addiction, and especially anyone who has the discipline and persistence to write a book. Having struggled with addiction myself, I have found memoirs in this genre to be extremely helpful. Believe me, I've read scores of them, and this is why it is difficult for me to rate this book as a stellar read. As far as addiction memoirs go, I found this to be predictable. Self-hatred, try drugs, become addicted, see everything in your life go to hell, get sober, relapse, get sober again. This is not at all a poorly written book. It didn't, however, present an experience that was anything out of the ordinary in the genre.