Woman, trashed - Joanne Brodie

Suburban, middle-class, and from a good family - this is what makes Joanne Brodie's story all the more shocking. It is the dual account of the relentless seduction of the impulse to self-destruct and, at the same time, the human spirit's desperate desire to survive. Brodie is unremittingly honest in recounting a life that saw her take the deceptively easy and palliative path that leads to prescription drug addiction and the ripple effect of its devastating impact on the people in her world. To the outside world a successful businesswoman with an enviable career and the trappings to accessorise it, how then did the woman with the world at her feet find herself working in a brothel and, finally, running an S&M parlour from her home? Brodie's story is never boring and often painful, and throughout it all she maintains a wry tone that lends humour to her serious subject. Whether she's exposing the many doctors and psychiatrists who reached all too easily for the prescription pad or describing the high flying, cocaine-fuelled lives of the rich and powerful circles she once partied in, she never compromises on the truth. And as she moves from gallery owner to prostitute to dominatrix and eventually to counsellor to many who sought her help and advice on their own lifetime journeys to recovery, her shrewd, original and on occasion eccentric insights will give courage and inspiration to all.

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