Blood Orange Night

“In this raw and captivating debut, journalist Bond chronicles her volatile descent into a benzodiazepine addiction... Pairing her unsparing candor with the same deep compassion she finds in the physician who helped her level out, Bond’s narrative casts a burning light onto the hazards of overprescribing and the threat it poses to vulnerable people. This cautionary tale stuns.”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“A harrowing memoir about a class of drugs as dangerous as opioids… Bond’s sharp critique of big pharma and the broken American health care system sounds an urgent alarm. A vivid chronicle of suffering.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Bond's story, with lines like ‘the blood orange night turns red and screams through my eyes,’ is an eloquent cautionary tale.”
—Booklist

“A page-turner memoir chronicling a woman’s accidental descent into prescription benzodiazepine dependence – and the life-threatening impacts of long-term use – that chills to the bone.”
—Nylon

“Deeply personal insight into the ongoing benzodiazepine epidemic.”
—AV Club
“In her propulsive, poetic memoir, Blood Orange Night, Bond narrates her experience in harrowing detail… Told with a journalist's commitment to fact and a poet's touch.”
—Shelf Awareness
“An engaging testament to the powers of self-advocacy and resilience written with lyrical clarity and heart. This cautionary tale will help many understand how prescription drug dependency can happen and the strength and courage required to overcome it. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
“There is a line in this evocative memoir that I will not forget, for it so perfectly sums up the effect that benzodiazepines have had on millions of lives: ‘Benzos are the thief that steals everything you own a piece at a time.' In Blood Orange Night, Melissa Bond writes of the thief that crept into her life with the narrative skills of a fine novelist.”
—Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic and Mad in America
“Blood Orange Night is a beautifully written and exceptionally moving firsthand account of Melissa Bond’s struggle with addiction to benzodiazepines.  It should be read by anyone considering taking or prescribing medication for insomnia.”
—Irving Kirsch, PhD, author of The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth
“This is the best-written and most immersive personal story on benzos that I have read. Melissa Bond summarizes the benzodiazepine crisis that is invisibly growing in the shadow of the opioids when she writes: ‘Benzos dismantle the brain over time. Instead of a swift and sudden death by overdose, there is a slow slide into disability.’ Immersed in her deeply personal story and peppered with pulsating prose, Blood Orange Night shows the terrifying but not uncommon consequences of using these drugs long-term as prescribed.”
—Bernard Silvernail, Co-founder and President, The Alliance for Benzodiazepine Best Practices
“Blood Orange Night has it all: sex, ABC World News with Diane Sawyer, brutal addiction that’s not addiction, and outright beauty (not necessarily in that order). There’s also a hilarious kiddo with Down Syndrome lighting the book from the inside, but he’s just the cherry on top of a magnificent cake of a book. If we were at a dinner party together and you asked me about it, I’d tell you to get the thing; get this book now and devour it. It’s that good.”
—Stephanie Wilder Taylor, author of Sippy Cups are not for Chardonnay
“With the unblinking eye of a journalist and the highly attuned heart of a poet, Melissa Bond brilliantly lays out the abyss prescribed benzodiazepine tranquilizers opened in her life…Blood Orange Night cuts to the bone. Here, truly, is hell on earth, and I can’t help but be awed by the strength and perseverance Bond manifested to emerge intact for her own sake and for that of her children.”
—Matt Samet, author of Death Grip