Publisher Description
“This vital memoir will change how we look at the opioid crisis and how the media talks about it. A deeply moving and emotional read, STRUNG OUT challenges our preconceived ideas of what addiction looks like.”
—Stephanie Land, New York Times bestselling author of Maid
In this deeply personal and illuminating memoir about her fifteen-year struggle with heroin, Khar sheds profound light on the opioid crisis and gives a voice to the over two million people in America currently battling with this addiction.
Growing up in LA, Erin Khar hid behind a picture-perfect childhood filled with excellent grades, a popular group of friends and horseback riding. After first experimenting with her grandmother’s expired painkillers, Khar started using heroin when she was thirteen. The drug allowed her to escape from pressures to be perfect and suppress all the heavy feelings she couldn’t understand.
This fiercely honest memoir explores how heroin shaped every aspect of her life for the next fifteen years and details the various lies she told herself, and others, about her drug use. With enormous heart and wisdom, she shows how the shame and stigma surrounding addiction, which fuels denial and deceit, is so often what keeps addicts from getting help. There is no one path to recovery, and for Khar, it was in motherhood that she found the inner strength and self-forgiveness to quit heroin and fight for her life.
Strung Out is a life-affirming story of resilience while also a gripping investigation into the psychology of addiction and why people turn to opioids in the first place.
Download and start listening now!
“Khar has achieved the extraordinary: she has written a book that is a finely measured balance of heart-shattering and heart-healing, created with stunning humility, vulnerability, and wisdom mined from years of brave research of the self and society.”
—
Reema Zaman, Oregon Literary Arts Writer of Color Fellow and author of I Am Yours
About Erin Khar
Erin Khar is known for her writing on addiction, recovery, mental health, relationships, parenting, infertility, self-care, and occasionally her undying love for Beverly Hills, 90210, appearing in SELF, Marie Claire, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and Redbook, among others. Her weekly advice column, Ask Erin, is published on Ravishly. She lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.
About Jayme Mattler
Julia Whelan is a novelist, screenwriter, lifelong actor, and multiple award-winning audiobook narrator. She graduated with a degree in English and creative writing from Middlebury College and Oxford University. She is a former child actor who has appeared in multiple films and television shows.