The Harder They Fall: Celebrities Tell Their Stories Of Addiction And Recovery - Hardcover

Stromberg, Gary; Merrill, Jane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1592851568 ISBN 13: 9781592851560

Publisher: Hazelden, 2005

Synopsis

The heady, drug-induced decades of the sixties and seventies provide the backdrop for this all-star account of addiction and recovery. Comedians Richard Pryor and Richard Lewis, musicians Grace Slick, Dr. John, and Chuck Negron (Three Dog Night), actors Malcolm McDowell and Mariette Hartley, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Franz Wright, writer Anne Lamott, and athletes Doc Ellis and Gerry Cooney are among the many celebrities interviewed for this inside look at what can happen when fame and fortune meet the recklessness and ruin of addiction. While the stories are as unique and vibrant as the individual celebrities who tell them, the irrefutable collective message is that addiction knows no boundaries. The disease strikes and topples even those who are seemingly on top of the world. Still, The Harder They Fall is a book of hope. In this modern-day version of the 1980s New York Times best-seller The Courage to Change, the famous people profiled have climbed out from the devastation of addiction to lead lives of extraordinary accomplishment.

About this title

About the Author

Gary Stromberg in 1967 cofounded one of the most successful public relations firms in the entertainment business and represented music industry superstars including The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Barbra Streisand, Elton John, The Doors, and Earth Wind and Fire. He coproduced the motion pictures Car Wash and The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh. He currently manages artists through The Blackbird Group.

From Publishers Weekly

The celebrities interviewed here--from Ann Lamott to Alice Cooper--are all in recovery from addictions to alcohol or drugs that originated in the 1960s and '70s. Among them are athletes, musicians, actors and even a member of Congress, Jim Ramstad. With the assistance of veteran writer Merrill, Stromberg, who ran a P.R. firm for musicians and produced films (Car Wash), provides a brief introduction to each subject before eliciting his or her first-person story. Stromberg, a former abuser of heroin, cocaine and alcohol, also shares his spectacular success in the 1970s and his equally dramatic drug-addled fall in 1980, when he lost his home, lover and career. Like many of those he interviewed, he became sober through traditional rehab and recovery programs. But Pete Hamill found his path to sobriety alone by deciding "to live my life without anesthesia, and that meant accepting the pain along with the laughs." Top jockey Pat Day describes how he was saved from drug and alcohol dependence through a commitment to born-again Christianity. The strength of these always honest and affecting anecdotes is, in fact, their variety of paths to recovery; the diversity should help this excellent volume appeal to a wide audience. (Apr.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Hazelden
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1592851568
• ISBN 13: 9781592851560
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 200