Amazon reader:
“This memoir, this story of addiction, offers chilling insights into the nature of addiction, how tricky and relentless, dogged and deceptive it is and deadly. This is one of three salient gifts of this book–how a successful person, as this author is (college professor, author of four novels, good family, kids) still lunged, or rather, crawled into the arms of the goddess of addiction, and how this disease of addiction trumped all that was good and working in his life: good marriage, job, kids. Even after 25 years of sobriety. It also reveals the pervasive and dangerous practice happening now in this century: prescription drug abuse–all those psychiatrists prescribing these deadly drugs to ease their patients’ anxiety and depression–“medications” that lead to worse anxiety and depression, and, sickeningly, to addiction to those very same drugs. That is the second most important thread and gift of this memoir. There is a quiet cruelty around addiction when all the noise around it is stripped away, and the invisible cloak of despair for everyone involved is revealed for the user and the user’s family. I imagine it took enormous courage to write this story–the author offers up his underbelly for possible slicing–as addicts are judged more often than not in this country. But, the author also gives the reader and any addict and their families struggling with alcohol and drugs–real hope. That is the third gift of this memoir: there is a path to recovery, there is a way out of the madness, the secrets, the isolation, the self-hatred and disappointment. Beautifully written.”