Smacked

Starred review from December 23, 2019
In this moving and intimate memoir, Zimmerman, a former New York Times business columnist, shares the story of the unexpected overdose death of her ex-husband, Peter, an affluent senior partner at a prestigious law firm. She writes of being confounded how a man she knew for nearly 30 years became a drug addict and hid it so well that no one in his life suspected it. Offering a look at the white-collar drug epidemic, Zimmerman chronicles her plight to understand Peter’s secret life: his addiction began with unprescribed pain pills
and ended with opioids, cocaine, and methamphetamine. Through extensive research, Zimmerman reveals that “the demands on a lawyer’s life places them at a greater risk for depression, heart disease, alcoholism and illegal drug use” and that Peter’s death was part of a much bigger social problem. In her most affecting chapter, “Better Living Through Chemistry,” Zimmerman discusses the challenges that millennials and Gen Zers face as they begin their own white-collar futures in a world where the pressure to succeed is enormous and drugs are readily available. Zimmerman’s wrenching story and her extensive research into the hidden crisis of white-collar drug addiction will resonate with many readers.

January 15, 2020
A searing account of how the author came to terms with her ex-husband's unexpected death from a hidden drug addiction. A few years after their divorce, New York Times contributor Zimmerman found her ex-husband, Peter, dead in his Del Mar, California, home. She knew he had been struggling for more than a year with "weight loss, chronic flu, sleepiness, 'nodding' (falling asleep suddenly), bruises, sores, [and] scratching." He was also missing family get-togethers and outings with their two teenage children. A couple months before his death, Peter had told her that doctors had diagnosed him with an autoimmune disorder called Hashimoto's disease. But his autopsy told a different story: Peter had died from "some combination of infection and heart failure" brought on by "injection drug abuse." In her candid reflections on their marriage and the months leading up to his death, Zimmerman revisits her interactions with Peter to understand how and why the man who seemed to have everything--a partnership in a respected law firm, a beautiful home, and more money than he ever dreamed possible--would succumb to cocaine and opioid addiction. As she recounts, Peter had displayed many signs of drug abuse, including forgetfulness and increased hostility, and their son had even reported seeing him unpack an Amazon box full of "cotton balls and Band Aids and needles and alcohol pads." Yet Zimmerman had missed them all because her upper-middle-class ex-husband did not fit the stereotype of an addict. Her subsequent research into white-collar drug abuse revealed that while genetics had likely played a role in Peter's death; so had the brutal demands of the modern working world. Many of the young professionals she interviewed reported the need to turn to performance-enhancing psycho-stimulants like Adderall and LSD to manage those demands. Intimate and disturbing, the narrative chronicles the tragic impact of drug addiction on a family and lays bare truths about a success-at-all-costs capitalist society in which many social relationships are becoming fractured. A timely reading experience in these hectic times.

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Starred review from February 1, 2020
Peter, Zimmerman's ex-husband, seemed invincible. He was a successful lawyer with a million-dollar California beach house, a sports car, and all sorts of expensive toys. It was an unimaginable shock when he died unexpectedly, and even more incomprehensible when his family learned that his death was due to several years of drug addiction. His teenage daughter and son saw their father on a weekly basis, and while they knew something was off, they never suspected that he was routinely using cocaine, crystal meth, pills, and heroin. In Zimmerman's skillful hands, the compelling narrative unfolds seamlessly and convincingly. Chapters skip around chronologically, revisiting scenes from the couple's courtship, marriage, divorce, and shared custody of the children as well as the horror of discovering his body and the aftermath of his death. The first-person narrative occasionally veers into excerpts about the psychology and physiology of addiction, citing research and statistics. Author Zimmerman's brutally honest account identifies several telltale signs that, in hindsight, seem painfully obvious. They help underscore her revelation that addiction knows no demographic barriers. A version of this story originally appeared as an essay in the New York Times, and generated significant interest. Libraries should expect substantial demand.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

February 28, 2020

Journalist Zimmerman was bewildered to find her ex-husband, Peter, dead on the floor of his lavish house in San Diego, having ingested a lethal amount of cocaine, opioids, and crystal meth. A successful lawyer with two children, he seemed to have it all. This memoir is Zimmerman's attempt to make sense of this tragedy, and of the pervasive drug abuse among white-collar professionals. In reconstructing her marriage in broad strokes, Zimmerman depicts Peter as thoughtless and frequently selfish, and paints a portrait of a troubled relationship in which she was always smoothing everything over, making it all work, and finding creative ways to get some measure of happiness and fulfillment in her life. Peter remains opaque throughout the book, his motivations and demons unclear; perhaps because they were unclear to Zimmerman. The marriage inevitably dissolves, after which Peter's behavior grows increasingly erratic and unstable as his addiction takes hold, ultimately leading to his death. In the aftermath, Zimmerman seeks answers from current and former white-collar addicts, as well as health-care professionals. VERDICT The book's strength is in the first half; Zimmerman's reckoning with her own incognizance will likely ring true with many readers who have confronted addiction in loved ones, friends, and colleagues.--Barrie Olmstead, Lewiston P.L., ID

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2019

Journalist Zimmerman's former husband, Peter, a high-powered lawyer, seemed too thin and too emotionally unpredictable, and then he stopped answering the phone. She found him dead of a bacterial infection that often strikes intravenous users, having never known that he was a longtime drug addict. This account of addiction in the upper reaches of the ambitious, moneyed professional world got its start as a New York Times story that received nearly two million views in its first three days online.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.