American Detox

The Myth of Wellness and How We Can Truly Heal

By: Kerri Kelly, Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams - foreword

Narrated by: Kerri Kelly

For fans of Hope in the Dark and Natural Causes—The myth of wellness is a lie. And until we learn to confront and dismantle its toxic systems, we can’t ever be well.

Better, stronger, healthier, whole—we’re an America obsessed with self-seeking and self-perfection. We've bought into the idea that with enough intention, dedication, and green smoothies, “wellness” is ours for the taking. But despite a $650 billion industry and infinite good vibes, we don’t feel good. We aren’t happy or healthy. We’re isolated, unwell, and inequitable—and the myth of wellness is making it worse.

In American Detox, yoga activist, wellness disruptor, and CTZNWELL founder Kerri Kelly sounds a wake-up call. We don’t need more green juices and self-care fads—we need to divest from the separation and scarcity that fuel the modern wellness movement and hold us back from making truly positive change for self and society. In the single-minded pursuit of feeling good, we fail to ask: is all this self-focus really making the world a better place? How does the stuff we consume in the name of “wellness” hurt communities and the planet? Whom do we harm when we divorce wellness practices from their cultural origins, and who’s left out?

To build wellness models designed for everyone, we need to dismantle a culture rooted in exclusivity, individualism, consumerism, and white supremacy. We need to resist, disrupt, and dream better futures of what being well can really mean—and do the inner work necessary to unlearn the harmful messages that we’ve internalized about what “healthy” looks like, who gets to be well, and why wellness is not a solo pursuit.

Each chapter includes personal reflections and prompts for collective action to help listeners reimagine wellness, understand positionality and privilege, and become agents for whole wellness on a society-level scale.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Kerri Kelly (P)2022 North Atlantic Books

Critic reviews

"An intimate, honest, accountable, and thorough invitation into healing."—adrienne maree brown, author of Pleasure Activism

"American Detox is not only a wake-up call but a call to remember that if some of us aren’t well, none of us are well."—MICHELLE C. JOHNSON, author of Finding Refuge

"Urgent and unflinching."—NICOLE CARDOZA, founder of Reclamation Ventures, author, and magician

The brutal honesty yet loving approach.

These are things we as African Americans know. Bold words! What are the next steps? Who is listening and doing something about this?

Repetitive rhetoric that sounds like wellness

I've been on an anti-wellness kick and I liked that this book seemed to incorporate social justice issues, based on the description. The intro chapters surprised me in how they rambled and generalized "our problem," naming persistent social inequality and related ills like homelessness, racism, etc, but without referencing any specific literature, studies, or expert sources or even including any outside anecdotes other than the author's experience of 9/11. There was a lot of "this book will show..." so I held off judgement.
Chapter 1 weaves the author's experience of 9/11 with a loose amalgamation of ideas related to North American settler colonialism, but for the latter just references stolen land and genocide without referencing a specific event, source, or expert while then implicating them in modern American cultural ethos and seemingly 9/11 itself. If you have been living under a rock, you might not know that a lot of America was built on stolen land by enslaved people and still is not really a just or equitable society, but for the rest of us, there's nothing new. There are also- no solutions. Like 45 min of hearing over and over and OVER words similar to "we have to reckon with our colonizer past before we can build a more equitable future," before a few minutes of solutions which amounted to: visit indigenous lands and pay some land tax, pay attention to what indigenous people are saying. That was it. That's all she has for HOW to actually deal with the past/build a better future. After starting Chapter 2 and listening to a string of inaccuracies about the healthcare system (of course with no citations) I realized it wasn't going to get any better.
This book reads like an impassioned undergraduate student's writing that's full of rhetoric but no research or solutions. And in doing so, really seems to wield the tactics common to the wellness industry itself: making expansive claims in vague terms with no evidence. I want my credit back.

Learned nothing about detoxing

Sorry, the title is misleading. Looks like the author is so angry about the current system that she forgot to talk about the novel solutions. The solutions offered have been implemented already. I was not convinced the author herself has detoxed from anything. The book is so negative, rehashing the same problems over and over. On a good side - used big words. In general, a waste of time.

too much problem not enough solution

Her premise is solid but there is not nearly enough presented on solutions to the obvious and ongoing problems she discusses. Also the narration was a repetitous cadence that lost all emphasis on things that really held value. I really wanted to like this book but was Disappointed !