New book focuses on the United States of Recovery
Saturday, December 6th, 2008In his new book, America Anonymous, author Benoit Denizet-Lewis follows the lives of six addicts as they travel through the ups and downs of recovery. He uses their stories to paint a picture of a country filled with addictions - from drugs and alcohol to gambling and eating - and where the recovery process itself has become a way of life.

Denizet-Lewis got the idea for his book when he was struggling with recovery from his own sex addiction - a situation that made writing America Anonymous that much more challenging.
“I wasn’t calling back friends, wasn’t going to therapy, wasn’t taking my dog for a walk, my whole life, practically all day, was consumed with sex addiction, and you know, that is what sex addiction can look like,” says Denizet-Lewis.
“If you want to talk about what was challenging was writing a book about addiction, so thinking and reading and writing about addiction all day long, and then having to worry about my own recovery at the same time,” he says. “Having to go to my own recovery meetings, and do all the work I need to do to have a sane life, and a happy life, so a lot of days, I was like, ’this is too much addiction.’”
But the result is well worth the effort of the author, a member of the gay community and a writer for the New York Times.
In the book, Denizet-Lewis criss-crosses the country to paint a truly fascinating picture of our country and how we gain comfort in our addictions and our recovery programs.
While interview counselors and medical experts, he found a community at odds about the root causes of addiction, “We don’t agree on what we’re talking about. We can’t grapple with what is and isn’t addiction and who’s to blame, and is it genetic, and why can’t people pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”


