Reviews
The Incurable Romantic and Other Unsettling Revelations
The Incurable Romantic and other Unsettling
Revelations, by Frank Tallis
ISBN: 978-0349142951
Abacus (paperback), £9.99
Anyone who has attended a sex and love addiction
meeting knows that when natural human instincts
and emotions run out of control, they can cause deep
distress. Psychotherapist Frank Tallis skilfully illustrates
a full and often extreme range of such cases, including
a paedophile who would ‘rather die’ than act out his
obsession with a six-year-old girl.
Intimate relationships are often problematic for
people who’ve been addicted to alcohol and other
drugs. Don’t get involved with anyone in your first year
clean and sober, is an advice mantra. Recovery needs
time to replace self-loathing and consolidate what
Tallis terms, ‘a sense of one’s own identity’.
‘He reminded me of an addict,’ the author says of a
client who has been rejected, ‘the sudden withdrawal of
the object of his desire made him profoundly
depressed’, there was a ‘shivering enfeeblement’. Just as
someone in early addiction might not see any downside
to their drug of choice, he idealised the woman he loved
as a goddess, with only adorable traits: a fixation.
Love is always fuelled by endogenous ‘drugs’:
dopamine, phenethylamine, oxytocin and testosterone.
Sex involves ‘compounds that resemble amphetamines
and opiates, with hormone rushes as addictive as street
drugs’, while ‘the psychoactive substances released into
our bloodstream when we are aroused can take us out
of time and make us feel boundless and eternal’.
In The Woman Who Wasn’t There, a female client is
utterly convinced her male partner is having an affair.
She checks the bed for tell-tale ‘stains, hairs… picking
them off the sheet and holding them under a lamp’.
She is diagnosed with Delusional Disorder: Jealous
Type. The man denies her ‘oppressive’ suspicions. ‘Was
he telling the truth?’ Tallis thinks so, but his is not an
exact science and ‘I could be wrong’.
The Man Who Had Everything is a rich young
entrepreneur who definitely hasn’t been honest with
his wife. She finds out he’s seen prostitutes. It’s
MEDIA SAVVY
‘It’s reignited
the debate on
the ways violent
crime is linked
to a rise in
cocaine use.’
THE SENSELESS SLAYING OF 17-YEAR-
OLD JODIE CHESNEY in an Essex park a
week ago shocked Britain. Not only has
it shone a spotlight on the country’s
spiralling knife crime epidemic but it’s
reignited the debate on the ways
violent crime is linked to a rise in
cocaine use – and how the 875,000
16 | drinkanddrugsnews | April 2019
Brits who take it each year could be
complicit in her death.
Rebecca Evans, Sun , 9 March
MANY OF THE PEOPLE I KNEW FROM
NA ARE DEAD. Some relapsed and
overdosed. Some killed themselves.
Some died of Aids and hepatitis C.
actually more than
3,000. He takes
escorts to candlelit
dinners and shows
them round big
houses as if they
were buying together.
He’s addicted to
being fallen in love
with. Then he wants
to do it all again, with
someone new.
Tallis has a likeable
writing personality,
willing to admit
mistakes: ‘I had become an inquisitor, and the rapidity
of my questions made him uneasy’. He tightly weaves
his attempts to help manage abnormalities with
fascinating historical and theoretical background. It
works perfectly. We also get to know the author,
including his own love-life failures. He seeks ‘the thrill
of the uncanny’ (which is also a celebration of
diversity). ‘Abandoned’ is a frequent word here. There
are people who have been left adrift, sometimes by an
untreated repressed childhood memory. Tallis also loves
going to abandoned places, especially ‘wandering
around old asylums, looking for curiosities’.
This essential book leaves few crevices of the
human mind and body unattended to.
Review by Mark Reid
Don’t get
involved with
anyone in your
first year clean
and sober...
Recovery needs
time to replace
self-loathing.
The news, and the skews, in the national media
Others have died of heart disease and
cancer: a far higher mortality rate
from natural causes than among those
I know who weren’t addicts… I am one
of the fortunate ones. Sure, I’ve
worked hard at my recovery, but I
have been lucky to have people in my
life whom I adore and to have been
able to make a career out of doing a
job I love. Yes, it would have been nice
to have enjoyed it all a bit more – I
tend only to recognise happiness as
the absence of pain – but you can’t
have everything. I’m still here and
that’s the main thing.
John Crace, Guardian , 25 March
CLAIMING THAT ADDICTION IS A
DISEASE is not only scientifically
baseless, it hinders rather than helps
many addicts because it undermines
hope. It makes them believe they do
not have agency over their condition,
that they are helpless in the face of a
greater force. Whereas they are the
only ones who can help themselves.
Jan Moir, Mail , 8 March
NO, NOT EVERY MARIJUANA SMOKER
GOES OUT AND KILLS. So what? Not
every boozer gets into fights, or
commits rape, or kills people with
drunken driving. Not every cigarette
smoker gets cancer or heart disease.
But we act against these things
because of the significant minority
who do cause or experience these
tragic outcomes. And almost all of
those who go out and kill someone
with a blade will turn out, once the
investigation is over, to be a long-term
user of marijuana, no longer wholly
sane or wholly civilised. Its widespread
use is the only significant social
change in this country that correlates
with the rise in homicidal violence.
Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday ,
11 March
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com