New Book. New Title. New Reason To Annoy You Constantly.

Welcome to Breaking Awake!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

About 7 years ago, I had a mental breakdown. I woke up one morning with my hands shaking, feeling like I was being chased by a wild animal. Apparently, this is what happens when you suppress everything in your life, including multiple near-death experiences, questions about your gender, and the general stress of living under capitalism.

To recover, I did the normal things: I went to therapy. I did yoga. I also did a lot of drugs. The downers like Klonopin to keep me alive when I was at my worst, the prescription pharmaceuticals like SSRIs and Adderall to keep me stable (though kind of dead inside), and the fun ones—the ketamines and LSDs and 2C-Bs—to help me envision my life anew.

Well, 7 years later, I’ve written a book about it. But it’s about more than me. It’s about an entire country and world seemingly in the middle of a breakdown, on the precipice of fascism and complete isolation and constant deaths of despair. And it’s about how so many of us are coping these days—by using drugs.

In Breaking Awake: A Reporter’s Search for a New Life, and a New World, Through Drugs, I criss-cross the country interviewing people in various stages of mental breakdown and breakthrough, asking them how they use drugs to navigate life under late-capitalism. From the streets of Philadelphia and Vancouver, where anarchists are handing out free heroin, to the homes of people who’ve been on SSRIs from the time they were toddlers, to the clubs of New York where everyone is on drugs you’ve never heard of, people are using substances not only to manage the stress of daily life, but to envision new lives for themselves and others.

These stories are interwoven with my own, and, in totem, I hope they answer the questions of why we all are looking to get high, and, most importantly, whether there is something potentially subversive in that desire. Can we use drugs to bring about a new world? Or are they just ways to numb ourselves as the world gets worse and worse? You’ll have to read to find out!!!

I will be posting an excerpt from the book as we get closer to its release date. And I’ll announce more news about it here in the next few months. But for now, I want to say: I’m soooooo excited for you to read it!!! It’s been a huge part of the last five years of my life, and I’m, to be frank, extremely proud of it. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you find solace in it. I hope it pushes our understanding of drugs in a new direction.

And I also want to say: thank you!!!!!! It has been an honor and a privilege to have this little newsletter and community and interact with you and learn so much from so many of you. Life is lonely, and this newsletter has made me feel a little less alone. I hope it’s done the same for you too.

Yayy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can pre-order Breaking Awake on Amazon or Barnes and Noble now. It’ll be available at other retailers soon, and delivered to your doorstep on September 9th.

:))))))))

-Paris (P.E.) Moskowitz