Through an Addict's Looking-Glass

by Waithera Sebatindira

Through an Addict’s Looking-Glass is an exercise in meaning-making, a thinking-out-loud. Waithera Sebatindira unravels how it feels to live as an addict under capitalism, pondering how engaging with these experiences could bring the horizon of liberation towards us.

Through embodied explorations of addiction and recovery, Sebatindira invites us to inhabit crip time, a concept that describes different temporal realities in the lives of disabled people. In this collection, the addict’s crip time is distorted, mutable and non-linear, hopping backwards and forwards through memory loops and memory loss. Blackout is time travel; sobriety is failure; finitude, freedom.

An uncompromising rejection of the objectification of addicts across the political spectrum, this powerful meditation on illness, disability, solidarity and spirituality illuminates their indispensable contributions to the building of a new world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Essays

113 pages, Paperback

First published June 29, 2023

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
I found Sebatindra's meditations on addiction and recovery moving, interesting and challenging, and for those parts I'd have rated it 4, possibly 5, stars. The sections on Christianity dragged for me, due, no doubt, to my atheism. As a person with a culturally christian (I need to use a small 'c' for that) upbringing, I know that many of my values derive from that tradition and, while I can find useful meaning and guidance in religious texts, I also find that I don't need a belief in a transcendant spiritual being for that.

Anyway, I appreciate that Sebatindra being a person with religious faith understands their experience intimately through a relationship with God, and that other readers will find these sections central rather than peripheral to their reading.

Overall, I am glad I received this as part of my subscription to Hajar Press, and even if I personally found it something of a curate's egg (if I can be forgiven the expression), it's enlightening to be confronted by my own attitudes and assumptions towards those who hold strong religious beliefs, and that's something I will reflect upon further.

[Laurie MM · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book was transformative. Sebantindira draws connections between addiction, disability, abolition and accountability through their own experiences and using a creative form which was refreshing to read. I struggled at first with the author's theological framework and reflections on God as I was not expecting it, but even as an agnostic with religious trauma I took something meaningful from their spiritual perspective on recovery and transformation which challenged mainstream ableist Christian narratives.

[adie · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful book about the aftermath of addiction and the constance of it - visionary thoughts about a revolution and a call for change in the status quo from first hand experience of what addict lifestyle can help in this change.

[Hayley]

loved and appreciated this book, how it captures the ambivalence of addiction with empathy and honesty, its thinking thru addict and crip epistemologies, faith and the eschatological illusion- rigorous and personal and oriented towards transformation.

[Isabella Moffitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Flowery language but some beautiful concepts. A big fan of describing the difference in the passage of time for people with disabilities, and viewing memories as not fixed in the past, but starting points that change and grow with new meaning.

“Consequently, my first response to the question, ‘is addiction a disability?’ is less ‘yes’ , ‘no’ or ‘it depends’. It’s usually, ‘why do you ask?’”

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

ah yeah

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5