| newley.com | Clips | "How to Stop Time" | "How to Stop Time: Heroin from A to Z" By Ann Marlowe Review by Newley Purnell (Appeared on Bookreporter.com 12/99) Ann Marlowe's "How to Stop Time" is a fascinating book about heroin addiction. You might find it interesting that I call it "fascinating" instead of "harrowing" or "gruesome" or "chilling." But it's true --- it's fascinating. It's a little grisly at times, sure, but it's also a completely honest love story: the tale of how the author slowly slipped into a romantic relationship with a dark and legendary substance. When it comes to drugs, we tend to place heroin in a league of its own. There's marijuana, cocaine, speed, hallucinogens, alcohol --- and then there's heroin. Heroin is different. It's a hard drug, one which makes you a slave, makes you sell everything you own and wind up homeless and emaciated. And then there's heroin's association with needles: hard-core users have to inject themselves endlessly, and, in the end, they're invariably found dead, slumped over with a dirty hypodermic jabbed into their biceps. Well, it doesn't always work out that way. In "How to Stop Time," Marlowe argues that while heroin can be a dangerous drug, it's also an intriguing one. The author was a functional heroin addict for many years, but, during that time, still managed to live her life free of major disaster. For her, heroin's principle downside is that it wastes time (hence the title). When you spend your life high on heroin, you don't have healthy relationships or a fulfilling job; you just stumble along in opiated bliss. "How to Stop Time" mainly recounts Marlowe's experiences with heroin, but it's also a book about her childhood. She was raised in a bourgeois New Jersey setting, and then, after attending Harvard, she moved to New York, where she would eventually run into the drug that gave rise to this boo k. Along the way, she offers not only stories of youth and young adulthood, but also some pretty interesting social criticism. Some of it is a bit of a stretch, but most --- especially her riffs on what heroin means in American culture --- is spot-on. Consider her musings on why dope will always be a drug associated with cities: "Heroin is an urban drug, an accessory of life lived all night, under artificial light, among indifferent crowds always in a hurry. It belongs with the all-night cafeteria, the after-hours clu b, the taxi, the tenement, the alley; it answers to the melancholy and feeling of displacement these spaces embody." Instead of straight narrative, Marlowe uses an unconventional format: she's created a sort of dictionary of her life, filled with heroin and non-heroin related topics. One of the first entries is "abstention," and it's about the way restraint figured heavily in her family life as a child. The last entry --- and don't worry: I'm not giving anything away here --- is "youth." It details the ways in which heroin allows its users to exist in what appears to be a timeless state, to cease growing up or getting old while they're under its spell. While I was reading this book, I kept asking myself what the final message would be. Surely, I thought, the book will end with a "and here's why you shouldn't become a heroin addict" moral. But it didn't come. Or, to be more exact, I should say that it did come, but it wasn't quite that obvious. Because, whether she intended this to happen or not, "How to Stop Time" shows us that heroin might not kill you. It might not force you into poverty, and it might not even cause you to lose your job. But it robs you of life's richness: the heartache, dejection, jubilation, and exhilaration which comprise the fullness of life's experiences. When you're high on heroin, you're on emotional autopilot. You don't feel anything but doped up, and you miss out on what it really feels like to live. Or as Marlowe says, "The life heroin bestows is not less painful, just less profound; not less stressful, j ust less surprising. And while dope does stop time, it also stops beauty." "How to Stop Time" is more than a memoir of addiction. It's truthful and compelling in an unusual way: because it doesn't glamorize heroin, but it doesn't vilify it, either. And maybe it shows us the drug as it actually is. Maybe heroin really is somewhere between mythical panacea and vile curse. | newley.com | Clips | "How to Stop Time" |