paperback, 208 pages
Published Sept. 10, 2019 by Cleveland State University Poetry Center.
Fearless, haunting, and transcendently honest, Amy Long’s Codependence is a memoir of pain and its paradoxes. Long documents her coming of age as an ambitious young writer plagued by chronic headache and entangled with a boyfriend’s opioid addiction. The essays that result explore the complexities of care, hurt, and hope with elegance and precision. Long exposes her every nerve, crafting a story both intimate and deeply relevant. An essential book for the opioid era.
This is a beautifully written, formally inventive, moving, and brave essay collection about chronic migraines, addiction, codependent relationships, and how impossible it is for many chronic pain patients to get the care they need. My favorite part may be the essay that's a list of all the NYC pharmacies the author had to visit in order to get her RX filled.
