Departing from the scholarly treatment of addiction as a form of rhetoric or discursive formation, Wasted: Performing Addiction in America focuses on the material, lived experience of addiction and the ways in which it is shaped by a ?metaphor of waste?, from the manner in which people describe the addict, the experience of inebriation or his or her systematic exclusion from various aspects of American culture. It will appeal to scholars of popular culture, cultural and media studies, performance studies, sociology and American culture.