cover image The Healthy Guide to Unhealthy Living: How to Survive Your Bad Habits

The Healthy Guide to Unhealthy Living: How to Survive Your Bad Habits

David J. Clayton, , with Laura Vanderkam. . Simon & Schuster, $17.95 (208pp) ISBN 978-0-7432-7214-8

New York City physician Clayton has put together a guidebook that should be a godsend for young adults with fast-paced, hard-partying lifestyles. He addresses popular vices from smoking, drinking and junk food bingeing to having multiple sex partners and doing recreational drugs. Clayton's view is that it's possible to reduce the negative side effects of such behaviors and minimize the risks associated with occasional poor choices. Naturally, he advocates making healthy choices to begin with, but being an urban 30-something himself, he realizes that since this won't always happen, it's better to be armed with the facts—and some great tips for damage control. Want to avoid a hangover? Lower the risks of smoking? Concoct a "morning after" pill? Avoid testing positive for drugs on a job interview? Clayton explains all in intelligent but easygoing language, as well as ways to deal with work stress, problems with sexual performance, STDs and dieting. Using real life examples and maintaining a sense of humor throughout, Clayton is the kind of unshockable, practical—but hip—doctor that any young person would be delighted—and relieved—to consult. Agents, Emily Nurkin and Laura Yorke. (Jan.)