Keeping tabs on authors in LINKcat: Barbara Gordon

 

Barbara Gordon is an example of a book publishing one-hit wonder.

South Central Library System LINKcat online catalog

New York Times, 4/15/2026

Trip Gabriel reports:

Ms. Gordon’s book, a New York Times best seller, found a wide audience in an era when prescription drug abuse was far less well known than it is today, when checking into “rehab” to kick an addiction was not nearly so commonplace, and when mental illness carried a far greater stigma in work and social life. 

In 1975, when she was 40, Ms. Gordon was an Emmy Award-winning documentary writer and director at WCBS, CBS’s flagship station in New York. She had a rent-controlled apartment on Central Park West, a live-in partner and an addiction to 30 milligrams a day of Valium, which a psychiatrist had prescribed for her anxiety. 

When she told her doctor that she wanted to stop the pills, he assured her they were not addictive and instructed her to quit “absolutely cold.” Instead of easing off the medication, Ms. Gordon spiraled quickly downward to the edge of psychosis. Unable to work, she spent months in two mental hospitals.

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