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Valley of the Dolls

Conventional wisdom suggests that prescription drugs (Vicodin, Oxycontin) are far less dangerous than their dirty, illegal street cousins (cocaine, heroin) since the former come from doctors and the latter come from windowless basements. The recent, allegedly prescription drug-aided death of Michael Jackson — and the inevitable legal jihad against his doctor(s) — just might expose this logical fallacy. But why wait for Nancy Grace to shout it at you in two years when you can read Joshua Lyon's Pill Head (out now)?

Part memoir, part case study, Pill Head is wholly terrifying for anyone who sporadically pops a Xanax to get through an awkward dinner party. Beginning with a bottle of Vicodin he innocently bought online for a story he was writing for Jane magazine, Lyon crushes and snorts his way through several thousand “safe” pills until his tolerance is such that the morphine he receives for his appendicitis does nothing to numb the excruciating pain.

The openly gay writer provides detailed explanations of the hows (shady doctors and armed robbery) and whys (anxiety and a lack of social stigma) of prescription drug addiction, as well as his own harrowing stories (before thinking better of it, he seriously considers stealing his ailing grandmother’s Percocet) and those of other addicts who found “legal” drugs so easy to get but so painfully difficult to quit. We’re already flushing that contraband Ambien we got for transatlantic flights.


Pill Head is out now from Hyperion Books.