Product Description

It had reached the point where she couldn't go more than five minutes without grinding up a pill and snorting it. Despite the worldwide success of her memoir, "Prozac Nation" - and the fame and accolades that accompanied it - nothing had changed inside Elizabeth Wurtzel. She saw herself as a terrible failure. She couldn't maintain a relationship. She was fired from every job she held. Exhausted from trying to make sense of a world she saw as increasingly phony, she left New York and headed for Florida. But not before securing from her psychiatrist a prescription for Ritalin (the drug prescribed to treat hyperactivity in children). This memoir is about the search for happiness, about depravity and the will to survive even the most breathtaking self-abuse.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #204278 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
From its demanding title, one quickly gathers this is no skip through the bluebells. More, Now, Again is the latest instalment in the confessional canon of Elizabeth Wurtzel, the tortured, talented author of Prozac Nation, who, by her own confession, has always pathologically "needed more". After her addiction therapist prescribes her Ritalin, a form of "mild speed" to take her mind off other drugs, and to help her "focus", she finds the pills lack the nasal intimacy of cocaine, so after a while, she starts pulverising them to produce something snortable. Suddenly she's on her way to another dependency, 40 pills a day, and another couple of years of strung-out, narcissistic desperation on the long and whiney road, bouncing between monomaniac spells in Florida and New York. It's not exactly for the pull-yourself-together brigade.

All of this would be unbearable for all concerned, were it not for Wurtzel's resilient, often bleakly humorous writing. Unashamedly exhibitionist, there is little she refrains from laying bare, including the obsessive tweezering of her legs to produce a mottle of sores and abscesses, ruthlessly playing on friendships to facilitate her habit and jagging her psyche until the only relationship she cares about is with the powder. Of course, when she finally steels herself, or fragments enough, to try rehab, she unravels something of her sense of "terminal uniqueness", as the lingo goes. Though before she can come clean there are to be countless relapses, criminal arrest, a torturous fixation on an alcoholic, a renewal of her cocaine habit, professional crises as she writes and promotes her previous book Bitch, and an abortion. The cumulative effect is less a cry for help as a suffocating Banshee-like squall. To come out of this blue period, to shift from Generation X to Generation Why, is achieved through will power and NA group therapy, 12 steps not to heaven but at least sobriety, and a determination to take personal responsibility for ending a familial legacy of abuse. At times you want to shake her, other times hug her, yet she remains one of the most savvy and provocative writers of contemporary non-fiction; how she handles happiness, though, may prove her biggest challenge.--David Vincent

Review
'If you loved Prozac Nation you'll love this' Evening Standard 'Despite her neurotic neediness, it's impossible not to warm to Wurtzel's wit in the end' The Face 'Elizabeth Wurtzel's writing, is, unfortunately, irresistible' Express

SCOTSMAN
‘Wurtzel’s writing is smart, sussed and heart-grabbing’

Customer Reviews

Because you need to know what Wurtzel did next
Prozac Nation was deliciously depressing and I was happy to leave it at that, but when a friend pestered me to read More, Now & again, telling me that the story only really concludes there, I gave it a go.

The first thing that struck me was how foolish I had been to think she would stroll off into the sunset after Prozac Nation, with all her problems solved. She quickly descends into more chaos & more addiction and frighteningly doesn't see any of this as a problem.

Critics of Wurtzel say this & 'Prozac' are nothing more than collections of self indulgent whining but I beg to differ. Yes, she is extremely self obsessed and self important - yet she cheerfully admits it. It's true that nothing really happens in this book, she moves from addiction to addiction and constantly avoids friends, work and going into rehab. But explosive special effects and twisting plots can be kept for Arnold Schwazzanigger. It's about the quality of her writing and it manages to be both sumptuous and as openly raw as the wounds she carves on her legs.

Half way through the book you feel like banging your head against a brick wall. She just never seems to learn, she is such a coward, screwing herself up, hating it, yet doing nothing to change it. But the fact that she can put it down for everyone to see proves she's acknowledged her own stupidity.

As you've guessed, the book concludes with her clean and looking forward to life for the first time without the grip of addiction influencing her. I can't honestly say that I believe she'll stay straight forever. She was tempted off the wagon hundreds of times throughout her other two books and when you think she's hit rock bottom, she keeps on drilling away through the seabed.

Or will she, like many recovered addicts, get so possessed by self recovery that it replaces the last addiction and is just as destructive.

I wouldn't be suprised if there was another follow up book, sheepishly admitting that it didn't stop there, there had been more madness, snorting, injecting, smoking and general chickening out of life. And if there is, then she can keep it. There's only so far the reader can believe in a character and empathise. But for now, I still care and for those who loved 'Prozac', you'll want to know what she did next

More Pills, Now Grown, Depressed Again.
What did readers expect when buying this book, for it to end as happily ever after. That isn't it at all. Life doesn't always have a happy ending. Elizabeth Wurtzel no longer is seen as a teen in this book, but a grown woman with adult problems. Her overwhelming addictions of snorting pills is horrible but you learn more about her personality. Her failed relationships, addictions and depression come through terribly clear....but she does learn..only the hard way. (Like the rest of us.) What I loved most about the book is her ranting about anything from Timithy McVeigh to her cat. Some have found the rants to be terrible but it is an inside glimpse to her thoughts. If you want fiction and a fairytale, go buy Harry Potter. As for me, I am just happy with hearing the truth and learning from it. It doesn't mean I have to understand it from my experiences.

Terminally Unique
I knew nothing about Elizabeth Wurtzel, the terminally confessional Gen-X postergirl for suicide chic, until I read an excerpt from this book in The Guardian. And I was so impressed, I bought the book.

This account of an escalating addiction to Ritalin, then coke, then porn, and ultimately and fundamentally love, is totally gripping, because it's so well written. A celebrated New York writer with a to-die-for apartment and hip friends, whose favourite pastime is shopping, and who admits that however early she goes to bed, it is hard for her to be up and out of the door before about 4-ish, Wurtzel is in the difficult position of trying to make us sympathise with her descent into coke hell. As she says, she had it all, and she 'threw it all away'. The odd thing is, it is such a no-holds-barred account, her honesty becomes compelling. The passages where she describes the speed-addled hours she spent tweezing hairs out of her legs until, at points, she got down to the bone (and the green infected pustules that ensue) forced me to put the book down for a couple of minutes to recover. But not for long though, because I was genuinely interested to see how she resolved this wretched situation. She is totally open about everything -- which at points can be infuriating, for example when she repeatedly describes how attractive she still looks despite being a cokehead -- but this warts-and-all account comes from the heart, and at points moved me to tears. And part of her problem is she is a born attention-seeker, so the writing does backflips to impress you -- she's not thick, and her prose is funny, punchy, has a huge range of reference (including her rather cool record collection), and practically screams 'like me, like me!' at every turn. It is fascinating to see how her Harvard education wrestles with the practical cliches of institutions like Narcotics Anonymous. Eventually she comes to realise that there is meaning in their hokey jargon, checks her cynicism at the door, and gets herself straight. You can't help but be a bit moved by this. I identified a bit too much, perhaps; but if you don't understand how you can be both too cynical and too naive at the same time, you really ought to read this.