** spoiler alert ** I loved this book. I literally read it in a few days.

However, I am sure I am not alone, as a reader, feeling frustrated that NOBODY be it family or employer or friends seem to pick up on the fact that Peter was a drug user.

Yes, the author discusses this at length in the book, but come on!! In some ways, I feel as though Peter was all alone in his final journey and while I know that addicts isolate in order to use, I find it sad that not one person put all the pieces together, particularly since it sounds as though he was giving everyone plenty of "clues" to work with. Could someone have helped him? probably not as is clearly indicated in this book - only the addict can help him/her self, but it makes you wonder anyway.

Having said all of that, I have mad respect for the author (and her children) for sharing such an intimate part of their lives. It must have been both difficult and hopefully cathartic to do so.

Although this book is separated into sections, for me, there were only 2 - before and after. The beginning part is fascinating, while the more "analytical" part is less engrossing. The author does tend to go back and forth between events (and years) but it is easy enough to follow.

Her writing style is wonderful. Down to earth and engrossing (I cannot call a memoir of this kind entertaining considering the subject matter) I literally could not put this down.

I would have liked a bit more detail on the "before" part, but overall, this is one of the best books I have ever read on addiction (and I read a lot of em).

Here is hoping everyone in the family is happy and thriving. I lost my dad when I was only 11 and while it was because of a car crash, I know that growing up with that kind of event in your young life marks you for life.

I liked this. It’s a different type of book than I was expecting, but it taught me things as well as giving me a good, but sad story. I had more sympathy by the end than I would have thought going in.

I was intrigued and stuck in for the first third of the book, but it lost me structurally after that. The bravery of Zimmerman in diving into the painful, intimate details of her husband's addiction (and, even more powerfully, overdose and aftermath) was obvious, and eminently readable. Unfortunately, the disconnect between the personal stories and the more non-fiction-y portions of the book were disconnected, and I lost focus.

A frightful and utterly engrossing portrayal of addiction in everyday America. Smacked is a superb example of true reporting!

SMACKED REVIEW AND LINKS

Part memoir, part exposé, SMACKED takes readers on a journey into the white-collar world of drug and work addiction.

When most people think about the Opiod Epidemic and even addiction in general, they incorrectly assume that the people involved must come from low-income communities and/or broken homes. This book proves just how wrong that assumption is.

Author EILENE ZIMMERMAN thought she knew everything there was to know about her ex-husband. After all, just because they had ended their marriage, didn't mean they had ended their friendship. They were committed to providing as stable an environment as possible for their two teenage children. They were in constant communication and even attended important events, such as graduations, together.

So, when neither herself, nor the children, had heard from Peter for several days, Eilene went to check on him. What she found upon entering his home permanently changed her life and the lives of her children.

As a journalist, it was not surprising that her reaction to discovering her ex-husband's drug addiction was to do research. What was surprising is what she uncovered. To find out all the details, you need to read SMACKED.

I am impressed with the writing style and how well the author is able to convey the details, including the emotions both she and her children were experiencing.

It is often difficult for memoir writers to be brutally honest about their experiences. Often, the desire to sugarcoat certain facts is given in to. EILENE ZIMMERMAN does NOT sugarcoat any details. This makes for a much more realistic and believable tale. She articulates her anguish with heart-wrenching clarity.

The fact that Eilene had believed all of Peter's excuses for the changes in his behaviour in hindsight can clearly be seen as being caused by addiction. However, Eilene, as with others of a  high socioeconomic status, had no experience with drug addiction and as such, the idea of it had never crossed her mind.

The more Eilene researched, the more she learned and what she was uncovering shook her worldview. She knew she needed to let other people know just how prevalent addiction is in high achievers. This discovery led to her writing an article for the New York Times which in turn, led to the writing of SMACKED.

Everyone should read this book and it should be required reading for new lawyers, stock brokers, and others who occupy high stress jobs.

I rate SMACKED as 5 OUT OF 5 STARS ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

*** Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this book.***

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3024842801

Provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This subject hit really close to home for me, with an extremely similar scenario with a past long term boyfriend. No one thinks drug addicts are successful professionals who run marathons, work in your office, and greet you at the door of the church on Sunday.

The first 2/3 of the book are about the author’s ex husband who has a cocaine and opioid painkiller habit...and was also a partner in a huge law firm. Like most people (including myself) who have zero personal experience with drugs, she missed the signs in the present even though looking back they are all there. She highlights how he explained away all the “side effects” (physical and behavioral) and how she justified it in her mind. Addicts are very protective of their habit and will go to great lengths to conceal it and use any method of deception.

The last third of the book covers statistics on white collar drug addiction and research the author conducted. I found it a bit dry and would have preferred it to be sprinkled in the rest of the story instead clumped altogether at the end.

Overall, I wouldn’t say I enjoyed this but I think it’s very necessary information. It’s easy to think of addicts as homeless people with no jobs and living in the streets, but this simply isn’t the case. It brings awareness to a huge issue in American society. I think the topic is far too taboo and I think there needs to be more acknowledgment that it happens even in the most upscale of communities.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for providing me with an ARC of Smacked, a memoir about drug addiction and healing. In exchange I offer my unbiased review.

Smacked is an up close and personal story of one woman’s experience dealing with the death of a loved one from drug addiction. What makes this story so compelling is the fact that her ex husband was a high powered lawyer who was also a white collar pill popping addict nurturing an $8000 a month drug habit. Peter hid his addiction from family, friends, coworkers, clients and his children yet his life was spiraling out of control right in front of each of them and nobody recognized the signs. The first half of the book is gripping and personal. The second half of this memoir becomes more of a statistical report about drug addiction amongst highly successful individuals who are fueled by success and ambition. They drive to succeed is often crippling and they turn to drugs to stay focused and relieve anxiety. This part while interesting was a little dry.

This book was great. Very informative, and i felt like i understood what it was like living with an addict, as the wife learns her husband is a coke, meth and opioids user.

Eilene Zimmerman has shared with us the pain, the grief, and the questions she has had surrounding drug addiction in our contemporary culture. Losing her ex-husband, the father of her two children in such an untimely manner, Eilene sets forth to examine exactly what may have driven this brilliant, highly successful attorney to his addiction, and why that may have occurred.

This book is compelling from the very beginning, and is divided into meaningful sections. Eileen's writing is easy to read, and full of emotion and relevant research. I highly recommend this memoir to those who have been affected by the drug abuse of loved ones, as well as those who are attempting to steer their families away from possible triggers and gateways.

awesome book, she writes in a style that begs you to turn the page. I couldn't stop reading, how an addict can hide their addiction so well, and be so high functioning, and how this family was ultimately devastated.

This story's examination of this couple's life and Peter's hidden drug addiction will grab your heart and mind from beginning to end. It is an expertly crafted memoir, but also an important research piece on the overlooked topic of drug abuse among elite professionals. The writer's stark honesty and vulnerability is riveting. The book goes back and forth in time much like the very best thrillers or mysteries, and the research part is digestible and interesting. The descriptions are spectacularly realistic and the reader is right there with the writer when her knees buckle or when she is carsick. What shines through this heartbreaking recounting is the author's admirable determination that the death of her partner of almost 30 years be a lesson and a warning to us all. She opens our eyes to overlooked signs of addiction and to our own stereotypes of what an "addict" looks like. This is a story that desperately needed to be told, and in the wake of this country's opiod crisis we are lucky that this exquisitely thoughtful and brilliant writer told it. But before you think the topic isn't for you, there is something much larger and universal here: the lesson that we humans can make it through tragedy, and that we can even come through it realizing there is something about ourselves to examine and improve, and that sharing our truth can help others. And that is a story not just about drug abuse, but about life.

I think that this is a very timely book in regards to drug use among white collar, high pressure professionals.
With that being said, I think that the author spent WAY TOO MUCH time on her own thoughts/boredom/feelings of her marriage to Peter.
I wish that the author had focused on Peter and tried to answer some basic questions about Peter and his addiction.
For instance, when did Peter first try drugs, did she try drugs with Peter, when did he try harder drugs like meth, when did he go from smoking meth to injecting meth, did Peter's co-workers know about his drug use, did Peter try to get help?
The list can go on and on and it was a glaring omission in the book that I found troubling.
I liked the research in the back of the book but her first hand experience with Peter focused more on her loneliness then Peter's drug use.
Overall, an ok book, the research at the back of the book was very good, but the authors part of everything was a bit boring.

I was drawn in to this family story from the opening pages from the horror the author discovers when she enters her ex husbands home.She is checking up on him since no one has heard from him and sadly she finds his body,
She then takes us back to their meeting courtship marriage and the cause of his addiction So intimate so intense a memoir that will stay with you #netgalley#Randomhouse

Couldn't put this book down. You hear about it in the news, but this is one familys nightmare. Very touching, and relevant for today.

Thanks to author,publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free,it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

An excellent memoir of how we choose to see the circumstances of our lives through the lens we can tolerate. A couple with a bad marriage exists in pain, and then the wife discovers her husband dead of a supposed drug overdose in their bathroom. And thus becomes the twisting story of their meeting, courting, and marriage, and the deterioration of the marriage. The husband is always "working" and since he is a high-powered businessman this sounds reasonable to the wife. Only in retrospect are obvious signs of deceipt and secrecy on his part brought into the light. Written engagingly and a page turner.