HLN’s Issues host Jane Velez-Mitchell puts the red-hot spotlight on our nation’s addictive culture
In her New York Times bestselling book, iWant, Jane Velez-Mitchell, host of HLN’s Issues, detailed how her addictive personality infiltrated her life and led her to over consume everything from alcohol to food to work to spending. Now, in her latest book, Addict Nation: An Intervention for America (HCI Books — $24.95 – February/March 2010), in her trademark no-holds-barred style, Velez-Mitchell targets our entire culture, calling it a Nation of Addicts – arguing that Americans have collectively become dependent on and devoted to certain dysfunctions (including obsessive cleanliness, cruelty, sexual exploitation, food addiction, prescription drug dependency, overpopulation, overconsumption, war, incarceration, and crime).
When enough people are hooked on the same substance or behavior, it crosses the line into a cultural addiction. According to Velez-Mitchell, media, government, and the private sector are also culturally hooked on these destructive customs and therefore justify, romanticize, and promote them—in essence, becoming “pushers.”
In Addict Nation, Jane Velez-Mitchell calls attention to the collective denial society lives in about its addictions and overconsumption and confronts America to look at its bad behavior for what it really is: compulsive and self-destructive. In orders, Addict Nation is an intervention. It will shock addicts out of denial and inspire them to get help and get well.
