NPR

'Strung Out' Tackles Pain, Stigma And Shame Of Drug Use

Erin Khar's son, at 12, asked her if she'd ever used drugs; this book is her answer: "When we write the truth, when we write about our experiences, we reflect back what it means to be a human being."
<em>Strung Out: One Last Hit and Other Lies That Nearly Killed Me,</em> by Erin Khar

Drug addiction continues to be wildly misunderstood and deeply stigmatized in the United States.

We've witnessed this in its many and varied degrees. Take the headline of as one casually awful example: "Ben Affleck Tried to Drink Away the Pain. Now He's Trying Honesty." The implication here is that drinking and honesty are opposite tactics, making drinking away one's pain an automatically act. I don't really care about Ben Affleck the celebrity — what bothers me about this kind of framing is how

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