The Female Fix

Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. x, [2], 212, [4] pages. DJ has some creasing and small scuffs. Signed by the author on the front free end paper on April 18, 1980, with Best Wishes, Muriel Nellis. Text includes Acknowledgments, . Topics covered include The Unadmitted Problem; Valium for the Lump in Your Throat; The Unprepared Mother; Working Women; Her Husband's Career; The Older Woman; Male Doctors, Female Patients; The Drugs and How They Work; The Big Mood-Altering Business; The Search for Help; and Finding Yourself without Drugs, Appendix: Where to Find Help; State Programs; Treatment Resources; and Self-Help Organizations. The Female Fix explores the dilemmas confronting every woman, whether or not she is troubled with the problems of prescription drugs or alcohol. This unique book, for the first time, discusses the problem of drug and alcohol addictions among women in the proper context of personal and institutional forces that affect daily life. Muriel Nellis combines breadth of information with depth of knowledge on women and drugs, and provides a new beginning for those whose lives and dreams have been lost to drug dependence. The chief use of a book like this is to assure those suffering from the problem in silence that they are not alone; there are many stories about girls who learned the pill method of coping from their mothers and about older women hooked on hormone pills without even knowing it. There are also detailed appendixes listing treatment resources throughout the country. In 1960, when Muriel Nellis was a young wife and mother, she decided to launch a promising business idea. Even though she had previously worked as a radio writer and producer in Philadelphia and New York, her bank told her she couldn't get a $150 loan to buy an electric typewriter unless her husband or father signed the papers. Muriel fought back. She not only convinced the bank president to give her the loan, but went on to create and self-publish an innovative line of children's educational coloring books that were distributed widely in drugstores throughout the nation and shipped overseas to Army exchange bases. When the Kennedy children fell in love with them, she received a letter from the White House commending her for the project, which introduced kids to different languages and cultures.
From there she became the editor of a music and entertainment fan magazine and the publisher of Ladies Circle, a women's magazine. Her bold first covers (the Beatles on their first tour of the US for the fan magazine and Jackie Kennedy for Ladies Circle) helped pull both magazines out of bankruptcy and on to years of success. Muriel's career in publishing only took off from there. After writing The Female Fix, one of two early books on the problem of women's addiction, she became involved as a spokesperson for what she believed to be the most important problem for women and children at the time. Soon she was asked to serve with First Lady Rosalind Carter on the President's Commission on Mental Health, and the NIH contracted her to write a book educating teachers and other professionals about how to recognize the signs of substance abuse in their students and clients. Later, after designing and directing the first national conference on Drugs, Alcohol and Women's Health, she helped set up the National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NCADI). Around that time a friend's book was rejected by an agent, and in characteristic fashion, Muriel decided to do it herself. After she successfully sold the manuscript to a major publisher and brokered the contract, she ended up establishing her own agency, Literary and Creative Artists. With a marketing campaign that began with securing a contract with Walt Whitman's storied publisher (Houghton Mifflin), Literary and Creative Artists became a top-selling agency for the New Age breakout book category. Soon authors originally considered "New Age" went "mainstream," and over three-dozen other thought-leader writers became clients. Most recently, her agency represented the brilliant film director David Lynch for his book Catching the Big Fish.