PILL HEAD: Why Joshua Lyon owes everything to heroin
As part of a new content partnership between Flatmancrooked and WordHustler, we’ll be presenting, from time to time, interviews and articles from the WordHustler archives. (If you’re a writer looking for a submission platform that can help you get your work published, and you’re still using Duotrope, you need to click on this link.) Today we offer an excerpt from Anne Walls’ interview with Joshua Lyon, author of Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict.
It’s not often that people feel like confessing their darkest secrets and behaviors. It’s even less often that they do it in a memoir for all the world to read. But that’s just what Joshua Lyon, journalist and author of Pill Head: The Secret Life of a Painkiller Addict, did. Brutally honest and gut-wrenchingly revealing, Lyon’s book is a hybrid memoir, combining personal anecdotes with journalistic research and reporting. Lyon’s unflinching look into the world of painkiller abuse, addiction, and recovery is harrowing—and hard to put down.
WordHustler sat down with Lyon to discuss his background in journalism, his experience writing such a personal memoir, and why he owes everything in his life to heroin. Confused? Read on.
As a special WordHustler treat, we’re going to be giving away an AUTOGRAPHED copy of Pill Head, so stay tuned at the end of the interview for a brain-busting trivia question. You may win your very own copy of this taut and honest book!
WordHustler: Obvious question first: did you always want to be a writer?
Joshua Lyon: Yeah, I did. I mean, it sounds weird, but I remember one day in 3rd grade we were handed a piece of paper with a list of professions like “fireman,” “policeman,” “detective.” “Writer” was one of them and I remember it was the one word I was totally drawn to. I circled it with arrows and exclamation points, like, “That’s me!”
WH: What was the first piece of creative writing you wrote that wasn’t for school?
JL: I started writing some short stories in high school just to try it out and they were really horrible. I was super informed by Bret Easton Ellis and Dennis Cooper, so they were all very “1980s teenagers running away to Los Angeles and getting murdered by vampires.”
WH: What other books influenced you in high school and college?
JL: Anything dark, Dennis Cooper, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle—I liked that journalism bent. Oh, and Stephen King—I like horror or anything really grim.
WH: Have you written any horror projects?
JL: I’m working on a horror screenplay right now. I have to keep the idea secret. I have a writing partner who is the executive editor of Nylon. I’m very, very excited about it.
WH: What was your first career move out of college?
JL: Actually, it sort of started in college. To be honest: I owe everything in my life to heroin.
If you’d like to know how heroin helped Joshua, read the rest of the interview here.
