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ARNELL was out of control, on amphetamines, ecstasy, PCP, crack cocaine, heroin — anything, frankly, with a chemical formula that whacked you around the chops. She left XoJane.com and began writing erratic columns for Vice, such as “That time Lindsay Lohan wouldn’t do drugs with me” and “Cocaine freak-outs are only made worse by grizzly old bums who smell of urine”. It seemed a matter of time before Marnell suffered the same fate as Whitney Houston.

Almost five years later, though, and Marnell has not disappeared. There were times, she admits, when the drug use was so heavy, the insomnia and paranoia so crippling, that she “officially bowed out of the game of life”. But Marnell, now 34, has recovered to write this extraordinary account of sexual abuse, bulimia, wanton self-destruction — a youth as chaotic and hazardous as a smashed bottle of uppers.

How to Murder Your Life does not follow the arc of many drug memoirs such as James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces. Yes, there is a happy ending of sorts but in the final pages she admits that she’s still far