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Brain on Fire meets High Achiever in this visceral, propulsive memoir detailing a woman's accidental descent into prescription benzodiazepine dependence and the life-threatening impacts of the drugs' long-term use.As Melissa Bond raises her infant daughter and a special-needs one-year-old son, she suffers from unbearable insomnia, sleeping an hour or less each night. She loses her job as a journalist (a casualty of the 2008 recession) , and her relationship with her husband grows distant. Her doctor casually prescribes benzodiazepines - a family of drugs that includes Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan - and increases her dosage on a regular basis. Following her doctor's orders, Melissa takes the pills night after night; her body begins to shut down and she collapses while holding her infant daughter.