Breaking Awake

Breaking Awake Synopsis

From the "talented and impassioned writer" (San Francisco Chronicle) of How to Kill a City, a riveting journey that combines Drug Use for Grown-Ups with How to Do Nothing as it explores our national mental health and drug use crises while also searching for answers as to how we can find a path to collective healing.

Why are so many of us unhappy, anxious, and without purpose? And how can we get better?

Several years ago, P.E. Moskowitz had a near-death experience, followed by a nervous breakdown. As they willed themselves back to life from their existential unraveling using a variety of drugs, both prescription and illicit, they started to wonder: Why do countless people need substances to deal with their daily reality?

In Breaking Awake, Moskowitz takes us on a kaleidoscopic voyage through our nationwide mental health collapse, and the drugs we take--from fentanyl to SSRIs, to ketamine to LSD and beyond--to cope with the gnawing bleakness of our present moment. Think "Eat, Pray Love, but with ketamine instead of pasta" (Dazed magazine). We meet a team handing out free heroin on the streets of Vancouver, a young mother in Chicago who has been on SSRIs since childhood, and ravers in Brooklyn taking hallucinogens to push the limits of human consciousness and collective healing. Throughout this cross-country tour, Moskowitz questions whether drugs can spark liberation or simply quell the pain of modern life. Blending memoir, reportage, and cultural criticism, Breaking Awake takes readers on a "funny, smart, and profound" (Interview magazine) journey through how we actually use drugs--to survive, to soothe, and, sometimes, to thrive.