Blood orange night : my journey to the edge of madness /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Brain on Fire meets High Achiever in this "page-turner memoir chronicling a woman's accidental descent into prescription benzodiazepine dependence--and the life-threatening impacts of long-term use--that chills to the bone" ( Nylon ).

As Melissa Bond raises her infant daughter and a special-needs one-year-old son, she suffers from unbearable insomnia, sleeping an hour or less each night. She loses her job as a journalist (a casualty of the 2008 recession), and her relationship with her husband grows distant. Her doctor casually prescribes benzodiazepines--a family of drugs that includes Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan--and increases her dosage regularly.

Following her doctor's orders, Melissa takes the pills night after night until her body begins to shut down. Only when she collapses while holding her daughter does Melissa learn that her doctor--like so many others--has over-prescribed the medication and quitting cold turkey could lead to psychosis or fatal seizures. Benzodiazepine addiction is not well studied, and few experts know how to help Melissa as she begins the months-long process of tapering off the pills without suffering debilitating, potentially deadly consequences.

Each page thrums with the heartbeat of Melissa's struggle--how many hours has she slept? How many weeks old are her babies? How many milligrams has she taken? Her propulsive writing crescendos to a fever pitch as she fights for her health and her ability to care for her children. "Propulsive, poetic" ( Shelf Awareness ), and immersive, this "vivid chronicle of suffering" ( Kirkus Reviews ) and redemption shines a light on the prescription benzodiazepine epidemic as it reaches a crisis point in this country.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface (p. xi)
• Part 1 Insomnia
• ABC Wants to Know (p. 3)
• His Heart (p. 7)
• Sting and the Radiant Boy (p. 17)
• Easter Egg Blue (p. 23)
• The Night Rises and Grows Pale (p. 31)
• Scribbles on a Page (p. 45)
• Part 2 The Book of Sleep
• Manic (p. 53)
• Blur (p. 61)
• Redemption and the Manga Chick (p. 67)
• Pool of the Pelvis (p. 83)
• Specimen Haze (p. 95)
• Slip V Slide (p. 101)
• Stage of the Bargain (p. 109)
• Into the Soft Air (p. 115)
• Part 3 Dr. Amazing
• "It's an Incredible Drug" (p. 121)
• The Lost Year (p. 129)
• Cave-In (p. 139)
• The Sky Is Failing (p. 147)
• "Kiss the Kids, I'm Sorry" (p. 161)
• Blazing Green with No Red in Sight (p. 169)
• Siberia (p. 185)
• Part 4 Great Balls of Fire
• Down by Five (p. 193)
• Hunched and Cocky (p. 203)
• Five-Foot Dragon (p. 213)
• Giant Black Wall of Destruction (p. 219)
• Normal (p. 225)
• The Insomnia Tapes (p. 231)
• Benzos Don't Have Cleavage (p. 247)
• The Book of Waking (p. 253)
• Metaphor of the Holes (p. 257)
• Afterword (p. 263)
• Acknowledgments (p. 267)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Author and narrator Bond's story starts off so well: man of her dreams, wedding, pregnancy. But things soon start to change. Her firstborn son is diagnosed with Down syndrome; her job is a casualty of the 2008 recession; and her second child arrives soon after. Her doctor prescribes Ativan because she's stressed out and unable to sleep, and she still struggles, then bumps up the dosage. She collapses while holding her daughter and learns that she has a benzodiazepine addiction. Quitting is not going to be easy--if not managed properly, withdrawal can be fatal. Bond's story about the journey to sobriety and the challenges it holds is one that is not as commonly known but is very real for many. VERDICT This cautionary tale about dependence on and addiction to benzodiazepines (which include Xanax, Klonopin, and Valium) is very timely. Bond's voice is strong and real and the perfect choice to narrate the audio book. Strongly recommended for public libraries of all sizes.--Gretchen Pruett

Publishers Weekly Review

In this raw and captivating debut, journalist Bond chronicles her volatile descent into a benzodiazepine addiction. During her pregnancy with her second child, Chloe, Bond developed extreme insomnia, sometimes sleeping as little as an hour a night. Struggling, simultaneously, to care for an infant with Down syndrome, she relied on Ambien to help her sleep, until she met "Dr. Amazing," who, after Chloe's birth in 2010, prescribed Ativan, a benzodiazepine. " 'Take these,' my doctor told me," Bond recalls. "Frantic for sleep, I took them month after month, my mouth wide-open like a hungry carp." After her doctor began ratcheting up her doses, Bond realized she was in the grip of a full-blown addiction: "I was simply following my doctor's orders. I was in a free fall." In lucid flashbacks--one particularly haunting scene sees her blacking out while driving with her children in the car--she details the hellish recovery process ("a year and a half clawing in the underworld") that counted her marriage among its casualties. Pairing her unsparing candor with the same deep compassion she finds in the physician who helped her level out, Bond's narrative casts a burning light onto the hazards of overprescribing and the threat it poses to vulnerable people. This cautionary tale stuns. (June)

Booklist Review

Because benzodiazepines like Ativan and Valium are addictive, it's a bad idea to take them for long periods of time. In 2010, Bond, a journalist and mom with two very young kids, including one with Down syndrome, starts taking Ativan for insomnia. She gets hooked. She blogs about it and gets interviewed by ABC World News Tonight for a piece that never airs. Over time, she grows skinnier and weaker, and she and her husband drift apart. She switches doctors and takes Valium because it stays in the body longer and causes a less severe "freak-out" when she tries to withdraw. At the close of her memoir, with her kids ages 11 and 12, Bond admits that she still takes 5 milligrams of Valium nightly. At least she's alive, unlike Soundgarden lead singer Chris Cornell, whose death was ruled a suicide but whose wife sued the doctor who gave him so very many Ativan prescriptions. Bond's story, with lines like "the blood orange night turns red and screams through my eyes," is an eloquent cautionary tale.

Kirkus Book Review

A harrowing memoir about a class of drugs as dangerous as opioids. Making her book debut, journalist and poet Bond, a blogger for Mad in America, recounts her unintended overuse of popularly prescribed benzodiazepine drugs, which led to addiction and a long, painful process of withdrawal. In 2009, pregnant with her second child and caring for an infant son with Down syndrome, Bond experienced weeks of insomnia that left her physically and emotionally exhausted. "After nine weeks," she writes, "my hands begin to shake. There's the feeling of being broken, of the head and body not being connected. Some puppeteer jangles my legs, my head." After the first trimester, her doctor finally prescribed Ambien, assuring her that it would be safe for her nursing infant and growing fetus. At first, Bond was relieved: Ambien worked. Soon, however, the effects sharply diminished. The author learned only later that the medical literature advised taking benzos only occasionally, for a few weeks; she kept swallowing Ambien for months. After her daughter's birth, her doctor substituted Ativan, another benzodiazepine. Each time its effects stopped, the doctor increased the dose and then added Xanax. Still suffering from insomnia, Bond experienced other symptoms as well: memory loss, olfactory hallucinations, fainting, nausea, digestive problems, and depression, which became exacerbated when she tried to taper the dose. A frantic internet search revealed information that startled her: She was undergoing active drug withdrawal, much more severe with benzos than with opioids. "While the physical withdrawal of opioids is safely done in seven to ten days," she writes, "benzo withdrawal can be ten times that long." Furthermore, sudden withdrawal can be fatal. Bond's anguish affected her relationships with friends and family (her mother had been an addict) and especially with her husband. Marital stress added to her despair, as did her frustration in finding medical help. Bond's sharp critique of big pharma and the broken American health care system sounds an urgent alarm. A vivid chronicle of suffering. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Melissa Bond is a narrative journalist and poet. During her years of dependence on benzodiazepines, Melissa blogged and became a regular contributor for Mad in America . ABC World News Tonight interviewed her for a piece in January 2014. She is a respected writer on the perils of overprescribing benzodiazepines and has been featured on the podcasts RadioWest and Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books . Her memoir Blood Orange Night was selected as one of the best audiobooks of 2022 by The New York Times and Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books . Learn more at MelissaABond.com.