Cravings

Starred review from November 28, 2016
With her lyrical gift, singer Collins intimately invites readers into her struggles with food addiction and eating disorders, which nearly killed her. As a child, Collins shared her father’s passion for music, starting piano at a young age, but she also shared his addiction to sweets: “Sugar raced through my life.” Collins contracted polio at 11, and during her recovery she read voraciously while dipping her fingers into a glass of pineapple juice and sucking the sweet, sticky juice. In her early years as a folk singer, Collins discovered both her passion for performing and her growing addiction to food and alcohol. By the time she was 31 and a successful artist, her eating disorders were taking over; she spent a great deal of time eating and throwing up and weeping in remorse. After struggling to overcome her addiction in many programs, Collins discovered Grey Sheeters Anonymous, attended their meetings, and in December 1982—after 11 years of active bulimia—she embarked on their program, never to return to cravings and her obsession with staying thin. Collins weaves the stories of “diet gurus”—including Gayelord Hauser, an author and nutritionist who advised celebrities in the mid-20th century, and Jean Nidetch of Weight Watchers—into her own journey. Collins’s radiant memoir shines a light on her almost deadly struggles while vividly celebrating her new life free from cravings and sharing hope with everyone who suffers from food addiction.

December 1, 2016
The famed recording artist recalls her past struggles with overeating and alcoholism.In her latest memoir, Collins (Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music, 2011, etc.) treads some familiar territory covered in her previous books, referencing love affairs with Stephen Stills and others, her many musical triumphs, and the devastating impact of her son's suicide. More urgently, the author focuses on her addictions, specifically her long-standing ones with excessive alcohol and food consumption. The chapters cover specific decades of her life up through the 1980s, as Collins highlights the trajectory of her accomplishments in relation to the course of her illness and extreme forms of indulgence: several bottles of vodka consumed each week, frequent episodes of bingeing and purging. Despite these issues, however, her career continued to soar. "While I was performing my anxieties and fears disappeared; the music gave me peace of mind, the melodies and lyrics gave me wings," she writes. "And the pain of the increase in my drinking and the growing evidence that I had a problem with food did not seem to impact my career." She alternates her recovery story with biographical sketches of renowned diet and nutrition authorities such as Robert Atkins, Andrew Weil, Jean Nidtech, and Adelle Davis along with notable historical figures such as English Romantic poet Lord Byron, who also confronted an extreme eating disorder. For the most part, Collins is a graceful writer. In a memoir that is equal parts confessional drama and inspirational self-help book, she shares an engaging tale and provides some meaningful information for readers who may be struggling with similar issues. However, the alternating structure often feels contrived and may lead readers to question whether she was seeking ways to stretch her own narrative or perhaps had two books in mind. A compelling read for fans of Collins and/or those confronting their own addictive behavior.

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December 15, 2016
She appeared the epitome of calm, the woman with the crystal voice who sang Amazing Grace and turned Joni Mitchell's exquisite song Both Sides Now into a huge hit. But even at the height of her success, Collins was afflicted with addictions to alcohol, drugs, and food. She suggests that she inherited the addiction gene: her father, blind from the age of four, was an alcoholic. But it is her eating disorder that she focuses on in this intensely candid and detailed memoir. She describes herself as an active, working alcoholic with an eating disorder who yearned for serenity. She knew how to thrive onstage, but getting through ordinary life was altogether different as she struggled with binge eating and purging, bulimia, gaining and losing weight, and even losing her voice. Although she loved sugar, she was determined, from an early age, never to get fat ( I would rather die ). And die she almost did, numerous times. Collins' many fans, and everyone touched by or concerned about addiction, will be moved by her inspiring story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)