Named a “Best Book of 2013” by The New Yorker, NPR’s “On Point,” The Millions, and elsewhere.
How do you describe an addiction in which the drug of choice creates a hole in your memory, a “white out,” so that every time you use it is the first time--new, fascinating, and vivid? Michael W. Clune’s original, edgy yet literary telling of his own story takes us straight inside such an addiction--what he calls the Memory Disease. With black humor and quick, rhythmic prose, Clune’s gripping account of life inside the heroin underground reads like no other.
"The unusual risk taken by Clune's unusually good addiction memoir is its enduring lyrical reverence for heroin. The heroin is so close you can see the white. It hasn't been relegated to the past. It has an honest and dangerous smile. It's right here, whitely licking its chops." ~Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker