Breaking Awake

<p><b>''An unflinching examination </b><b>of contemporary culture''s quest for the quick fix to emotional pain''</b> LAURA DELANO<br><b><br>Why do so many of us need drugs to make it through the day? What is wrong with us?</b><br><br>In August 2017 a car ploughed into a crowd of peaceful marchers. For P.E. Moskowitz, this was a shattering near-death experience, followed by a nervous breakdown. As they willed themselves back to life using a variety of drugs, both prescription and illegal, they started to wonder: why do we need drugs to quell the pain of modern life?<br><br>In <i>Breaking Awake</i>, Moskowitz takes us on a kaleidoscopic voyage through the twenty-first century’s mental health crisis and the drugs we take – from fentanyl to SSRIs, from ketamine to LSD and beyond – to cope with the gnawing bleakness of our present moment. We meet a team handing out free heroin on the streets of Vancouver and a young mother in Chicago who has been on SSRIs since childhood, ravers in Brooklyn taking drugs to push the limits of human consciousness and ordinary people leading ordinary lives on a constant cocktail of medication.<br><br>Searching for answers to find a path to healing, Moskowitz asks: do drugs spark liberation or simply numb our modern malaise?</p>