A challenging and ultimately optimistic game plan for dealing with chronic pain; important reading for sufferers.
A debut book offers an unconventional approach to long-term pain management and relief.
Ennis, a psychiatrist with a 25-year career in treating chronic pain, opens his revelatory book with a stark declaration: “I am in pain every day, all day.” As the author points out, he’s able to explore the subject of long-term chronic pain from both sides of the equation: as a medical professional who continually deals with the issue and as a victim of the phenomenon itself. Therefore, he has a deep perspective on the often maddening, day-to-day reality of chronic pain sufferers, who are often forced to wonder: Must they simply resign themselves to being “burned at the stake” of their pain, or can they find a way to surmount it? In clear, accessible prose, Ennis proposes a strategy: a multistep process of self-hypnosis that he describes after grounding the narrative by telling his own story of living with chronic pain. He presents readers with comprehensive, readable histories of the study of pain and the development of the most popular weapon to address it: opioids. In his analysis of these potent drugs, Ennis remains unflinching. He rigorously examines the supposed efficacy of most opioids in alleviating chronic pain and finds them overprescribed and under-effective—and extremely risky, considering the serious nature of their side effects. Self-hypnosis, he contends repeatedly, has no side effects. The book’s central idea—that highly stressed and sometimes desperate sufferers of chronic pain must reject their impulses to reach for chemical solutions—is so revolutionary as to seem almost counterintuitive in the current age of both unprecedented opioid prescription and unparalleled abuse of those drugs. Ennis very effectively buttresses his advocacy for a more internal, mental method by threading the whole subject through his vast personal history as both doctor and patient. As a result, the ultimate case he makes is powerfully convincing. In forceful, unambiguous prose, the author clarifies exactly what hypnosis is and isn’t and then enumerates the steps of using it as a means of pain relief in either professionally administered sessions or ones that are conducted independently. It’s difficult to argue with Ennis’ assessment of the comparative superiority of his approach to the rote prescription of opioids. But even objections that might be raised are sidelined by the indisputable fact that the core of the technique presented here—controlling breathing, cultivating inner calm, conceptualizing the pain—should help sufferers regardless of their success or failure with self-hypnosis. The book’s underlying tone is one of hope, which is something sufferers often find is in short supply when coping with their health problems. Ennis’ own story underscores the need for such hope.
A challenging and ultimately optimistic game plan for dealing with chronic pain; important reading for sufferers.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-981849-53-6
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Barlow Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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