num_pages: 199
description: A searingly powerful memoir about the impact of addiction on a family. In the summer of 2012 a woman named Eva was found dead in the London townhouse she shared with her husband Hans K. Rausing. The couple had struggled with drug addiction for years often under the glare of tabloid headlines. Now writing with singular clarity and restraint Hans' sister the editor and publisher Sigrid Rausing tries to make sense of what happened. In Mayhem she asks the difficult questions those close to the world of addiction must face. Who can help the addict consumed by a shaming hunger a need beyond control? There is no medicine: the drugs are the medicine. And who can help their families so implicated in the self-destruction of the addict? Who can help when the very notion of 'help' becomes synonymous with an exercise of power; a familial police state; an end to freedom in the addict's mind? An eloquent and timely attempt to understand the conundrum of addiction--and a memoir as devastating as it is riveting.
language: English
title: Mayhem: A Memoir
publisher: Knopf