CRACKING UP

Lownds, an entrepreneur and the co-founder of Canadian mattress company Sleep Country, chronicles his 1,000-day cocaine addiction in this memoir set in Vancouver’s Lower East Side.

In 1995, the author was a successful businessman, focused on the breaking even financially with the first nine stores of his burgeoning brand, when he encountered a sexually adventurous stripper named Annabelle on a business trip to Seattle. At first, he only sees her when he’s traveling through that city, but she eventually invites herself into his Vancouver apartment, where he discovers that she has drug problem. After a series of refused ultimatums, Annabelle convinces Lownds to try cocaine with her and his own fast-paced addiction to the drug commences: “I’m firmly locked in the vise grip of two obsessions: sex and cocaine,” Lownds reflects. “This can’t be good.” Lownds gives this memoir a compulsively readable voice and offers a thorough and informative narrative of addiction, with the notable inclusion of his own poetry and song lyrics inspired by his experiences, many of which are included in an appendix at the end of the book. The author writes that he came to the realization in therapy that he was emotionally immature, and this is reflected in his account of his past, in which he sexualizes many of the women he encountered and used derogatory language toward them. However, if the reader thinks that he’s an unlikable narrator, it’s a response that he’s already predicted as a possibility toward the close of his book: “What I have recreated is what I believe to be an honest account, and I’ve done so as truthfully as I’m able to. And if you don’t like me in the end, then that’s okay too.” Overall, he provides deeply personal insight into his drug use, sexual escapades, time in rehab, relapse, and recovery.

An individualistic life story with an undeniably unique voice.