Honestly, I have some mixed feelings about this book. That is never easy to say about someone’s memoir. But I also want to give my honest take on it. Maybe some of my mixed emotions comes from my personal experiences and beliefs when it comes to addiction, and maybe because I recently read, “The Choice” a memoir, by Dr. Edith Eva Eger, an Auschwitz survivor who once thought her survival would depend on keeping the past and its darkness locked away. But she learned that when we don’t allow ourselves to grieve our losses, wounds, and disappointments, we are doomed to keep reliving them.
I totally agree with this and understand it personally.

I didn’t feel I got that same depth from Pillness and In Health. Now I know the focus of Henriette’s memoir is on pill addiction, but I would have liked to see more of her healing insights.
At times I found the story too repetitive. And yes, I know the cycle of addition is repetitive, but you must also consider the reader and keeping the story new and interesting.
Sometimes the author comes off as rather flippant. And yes, I am aware that humour can mask pain. But I never really got a sense of that pain.

She is not a likeable character. Though what addict is? At times I wondered if there might be some exaggerations, which brought to mind the whole James Frey memoir fiasco. I wondered if I could trust this author to tell the whole truth, that maybe her memory might be distorted or she possibly didn’t really know the number of pills she took.

This is the first time I’ve read a book about pill addiction.
Besides the pill addiction the reader is also learning a lot about a kidney transplant, which I found interesting.
At 14 years of age, she was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. At the age of 42, after two kidney transplants, she states: pills had become her life. From the lifesaving immunosuppressives to the mind altering one’s. She says she had no awareness of anything other than pills. She lived and breathed inside the vacuum of their container, powerless to climb her way out. She said: Pills gave her an identity.

I could relate to her husband’s codependent enabling of her, though my experience was with an alcoholic. I knew his sense of betrayal. He gave her his kidney to save her life and then had to watch her have such disregard for that gift.
She seemed to have a dance with death. She underwent lifesaving surgeries, yet on the overhand did so much to destroy her life.

Now I know there is much controversy over addiction being a choice. But I don’t think we can totally hold drugs responsible for every addict. In this case she had as she states: “a habit” of taking Tylenol 1 with Codeine every morning, swallowing up to 18 tablets at a time. She hid the truth about this from doctors.
She states that she did not take them because she was in pain, but because they got her high.
There is the choice. Why did she choose to get high in the first place?

Not everyone who takes Tylenol 1 with codeine becomes an addict. I have taken the pills many times as I know of numerous other people who have. There’s been no desire to continue. Not everyone becomes addicted, so, there’s more than just “the pills” to hold accountable.

In the book Henriette writes about going to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and that no one took her seriously because they saw her as an addict. She says these medical professionals believed she had chosen to become an addict. But with everything she had already heard and read, and what she said she could feel in her soul, she knew she HAD NOT chosen this path. That she had been born this way due to circumstances beyond her control, and addiction had taken her.
Yes, at some point she became addicted, but she made those choices in the beginning that led her there.

I’ve read that science has confirmed that addiction is a chronic brain disease that can happen to anyone. But please, don’t eliminate the element of choice in the beginning. That’s my point.

Most of Henriette’s memoir is about “feeding that disease.”
I am not trying to blame or shame Henriette, I just wanted to understand more of those choices before she became an addict. Before it alternated her brain and became a chronic disease.

In the first part of this memoir, before she gets into all the pills—aside from all those Tylenol 1s with codeine—and all the distraction from the real issues, she had just screen-tested for Ron Howard. She was looking for the next big thing. A Canadian living in Los Angeles with the plan to make it big. She writes: I was ready for the stunning payoff to a tantric career that had left me painfully unsatisfied. That she never felt “full.”
Driving back from this audition she did the many what ifs in head about getting the part. That voice inside that said she was a loser and a waste of space. She was driving fast down the highway and what does she do? She masturbates while driving while—as she described—listening to Cobain’s suicidal screams.

And there I feel, we have it: the choice or the need for addiction. Clues left behind in her own words.

Thank you #Netgalley for this advanced copy!

Wow! I cannot believe the amount of pills that Henriette needed to get by day to day. I do understand that she is a complex health case with two major organ transplants. You would think that would make a person be extra cautious and thankful; however, this memoir shares that that may not be the case from someone suffering from addiction. Addition is a disease that takes over the brain and may make you do things that you know are not the best for you. Unfortunately this was the case for 'Henriette. Henriette received her first kidney from her mother and her second from her husband. We see that at an early age she become addicted to readily available over the counter medication that then progresses into stronger and stronger pills, whether they were prescribed to her or a close loved one. Henriette shares her experiences the good, bad and raw memories of the extremes she went through to steal, cover and hide her actions. I kept thinking, she is taking a turn and becoming sober, but then life would hit. I would love another book showing more of her life now and she got to this point and maintains her sobriety.

I got into this memoir straight away. The story of a chronically ill young woman and an all-consuming addiction to prescription drugs. It was honest- the author doesn’t always paint herself in the best light and I think that’s applaudable. This memoir was different in that she had been introduced to prescription drugs at a young age due to her medical condition.

Here, the addiction intersected with the illness and both facets of this story were fascinating and gripping. There were often blurred lines in where one ended and the other began, with the two roads intersecting at pivotal moments leaving just enough room for self-preservation and justification- be it to herself, her partner, or to medical professionals. She was existing on a knife’s edge.

This is the journey into the depths of her mind during a devastating- and at times frightening- addiction. It’s not pretty but it is candid and soul-baring. I felt like a fly on the wall, with her perceptiveness making every scene feel like it was unfolding before my eyes: the desperation, deception, and self-abuse. The reference to ‘Her’ being the drug of choice and the demanding mistress, heightening the consuming betrayal and rationalizations of the addict. The drug was a ‘Her’; an elicit affair, the third person in her marriage.

She conveyed her own witty and unique energy through the telling of her death-defying story. It was actually quite terrifying- the sheer scale of it. The tragedy being that she, more than anyone, needed to take care of her health. This memoir has demonstrated how consuming addiction is, but also how redemptive recovery can be, and how important it is to never lose hope. This was her own unique story to tell, and tell it she did. 5 stars. I have been unable to put it down.

I received an ARC from Netgalley, In Pillness and in Health: A Memoir, by Henriette Ivanans. I did not like this book. I did not like the language or how she treated people in her life.