“I walk around in love,” says my best friend, about living in New York City. ‘I’m a city bird,” another dear friend wrote to me recently, “I feel whole there.” I’ve been here for 25 years. As a NYC college student in the early 1990s, I used to wander around…

I’ve tried leaving it, screen-timing it, weaning myself off it — nothing works — Have you seen the Beatles documentary, “Get Back”? These four men who are known as a cultural unit, these four friends who played together for decades, these members of one tight band — well, they can’t always reach other. “Is George coming?” “I dunno.” “Is John coming?” “I dunno.” And…

Sometimes I feel like I’m living on two different planets Last week, my husband and I played Pictionary with our little girls after dinner for three consecutive nights. Cards spilled on the floor. Pencil points broke under the pressure of eager, clumsy fingers. The three-year-old refused every assignment: “it’s too…

It’s okay to change your mind — First, a disclaimer: my family and I have been fortunate to remain safe. That’s a great privilege these days, as overdose numbers skyrocket. Still, my work over the past 11 years as a prosecutor and author has changed me. It’s simple stuff. In fact, it may seem obvious. I hope…

There’s a dad in Pennsylvania who’s watched every episode three times. His name is Ed Bisch, and if you’ve read Dopesick, (the heartbreaking non-fiction book on which the new Hulu show is based) you will remember his story. Ed Bisch’s teenage son, Eddie, Jr., died of an OxyContin overdose in…

The problem, it turns out, was my mind — I’ve cared so much, for so long, about my email inbox. I was always thinking about it, it was always on my to-do list. I set aside time every day to go through messages, I tried all sorts of filters, and downloaded all sorts of sorting programs. When I was…

The challenges of a break from Twitter and Instagram Maybe it was all the ads on Twitter. Maybe I was tired of seeing every complex issue reduced to a heated binary conflict. In any event, a few weeks ago, I set a screen time limit on my phone for Twitter…

A Q&A with Jessica DuLong, the freelance editor and writer who was instrumental to the editing of Bad Medicine. This interview was edited for length and clarity. — Charlotte: Jessica, you’re not just an incredible editor, but also a boat engineer and author. Which one came first, and how do your professions relate to one another? Jessica: I was always going to be a writer, but I never thought it was something I could actually [do] — and…

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know what sends me over the moon: public library mentions and emails from readers. …