His parents seemed to have everything, including the ideal marriage. But then their perfect life started to unravel. Mr. and Mrs. Scott began to fight - vicious, hurtful, drawn-out battles that went on day after day. Finally one day Mrs. Scott moved out. And that's when Preston's nightmare began...Now, three years later, Preston's dad is getting out of prison, and Preston is no closer to coming to terms with his feelings about him. Because how can you forgive your father for killing someone...when that someone was your mother?Here is Preston's searing true story about upheaval, growth, faith ... and the power of love.This unforgettable novel is a fictionalized account based on the words of the boy who experienced these events firsthand. "Impossible to put down . . . a stunning novel."

    Eye-opening and utterly gripping, Koren Zailckas’s story is that of thousands of girls like her who are not alcoholics yet but who routinely use booze as a shortcut to courage and a stand-in for good judgment.With one stiff sip of Southern Comfort at the age of fourteen, Zailckas is initiated into the world of drinking. From then on, she will drink faithfully, fanatically. In high school, her experimentation will lead to a stomach pumping. In college, her excess will give way to a pattern of self-poisoning that will grow more destructive each year. At age twenty-two, Zailckas will wake up in an unfamiliar apartment in New York City, elbow her friend who is passed out next to her, and ask, "Where are we?" Smashed is a sober look at how she got there and, after years of blackouts and smashups, what it took for her to realize she had to stop drinking. Smashed is an astonishing literary debut destined to become a classic.

    A deeply moving and emotional read, STRUNG OUT challenges our preconceived ideas of what addiction looks like.”—Stephanie Land, New York Times bestselling author of MaidIn this deeply personal and illuminating memoir about her fifteen-year struggle with heroin, Khar sheds profound light on the opioid crisis and gives a voice to the over two million people in America currently battling with this addiction.Growing up in LA, Erin Khar hid behind a picture-perfect childhood filled with excellent grades, a popular group of friends and horseback riding. After first experimenting with her grandmother’s expired painkillers, Khar started using heroin when she was thirteen. The drug allowed her to escape from pressures to be perfect and suppress all the heavy feelings she couldn’t understand.This fiercely honest memoir explores how heroin shaped every aspect of her life for the next fifteen years and details the various lies she told herself, and others, about her drug use. With enormous heart and wisdom, she shows how the shame and stigma surrounding addiction, which fuels denial and deceit, is so often what keeps addicts from getting help. There is no one path to recovery, and for Khar, it was in motherhood that she found the inner strength and self-forgiveness to quit heroin and fight for her life.Strung Out is a life-affirming story of resilience while also a gripping investigation into the psychology of addiction and why people turn to opioids in the first place.

    From seeing his father taken away to a concentration camp to arriving in Tel Aviv at the birth of Israel, Tommy Lapid lived every major incident of Jewish life since the 1930s first-hand.This sweeping narrative will captivate anyone with an interest in how Israel became what it is today. Tommy Lapid's uniquely unorthodox opinions - he belonged to neither left nor right, was Jewish, but vehemently secular - expose the many contradictions inherent in Israeli life today.

    Her addiction to the drug took her to a place about as low as a person can go. She stole and turned to prostitution to help her feed her habit. Rachel had grown up in Ballymun and had, like many others, succumbed to the lure of drugs during her teenage years. This is Rachael Keogh’s own story written in her own words. She is now thirty, a student of psychotherapy, an attractive and optimistic young woman. Her story is a remarkable account of recovery from the very edge of personal destruction. It is a heart-lifting story of human redemption.

    Phil's leading interventionist and recovering addict Joani Gammill."Exuding the same passion and purpose as the author herself, Joani Gammill's The Interventionist is a heartfelt game changer and long overdue. You deserve to read it." --Dr. Phil McGraw, host of CBS's nationally syndicated show "Dr. Phil" Joani Gammill, an average suburban mom on the outside, was secretly addicted to multiple forms of opiates and amphetamine for years, and almost died as a result. Through the life-changing intervention staged by Dr. Phil on his show, Gammill not only committed to getting help for her addiction, but she also went on to become a professional interventionist, helping thousands of others in distress. In The Interventionist, she intertwines her experiences with depictions of her often harrowing and always inspiring interventions of the addicts and families she's worked with over the years. In each chapter she recounts details of a client's unique battle with addiction and the devastation that led to a loved one's request for her help. Gammill's intriguing story--and the equally captivating stories of the brave people who come to her for help--demonstrates how it is possible to emerge from the seemingly hopeless world of out-of-control drug use and not only regain one's sanity, but actually discover that life clean and sober can be more meaningful than it ever was before.

    A collective cry for help from a generation who have come of age entrenched in the culture of divorce, economic instability, and AIDS, here is the intensely personal story of a young girl full of promise, whose mood swings have risen and fallen like the lines of a sad ballad.

    As the narrator's life crumbles, the pills, booze, and problems multiply until he hits on a brilliant solution: heroin. Soon the narrator is associating with a cabal of street freaks. Just as the comedy is piling up, things go sour, making Digging the Vein a brutal look at a self-destructed, marginal life.

    Before Nic became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets. David Sheff traces the first warning signs: the denial, the three a.m. phone calls—is it Nic? the police? the hospital? His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself. But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every treatment that might save his son. And he refused to give up on Nic.

    My body was acting on its own, and my mind was empty, like all my memories had been erased. There was scenery behind my lids. Aqua-colored water and powdery sand that extended for miles. I was never going back to coke. I wanted more heroin. And I wanted it now."Leaving behind a nightmarish college experience, Nicole and her friend, Eric, escape their home of Bangor, Maine to start a new life in Boston. Fragile and scared, Nicole desperately seeks a new beginning to help erase her past. But there is something besides freedom waiting for her in the shadows—a drug that will make every day a nightmare.Heroin.With one taste, the love that once flowed through Nicole's veins turns into cravings. Tracks mark the passing of time, and heroin's grip gets tighter. It holds her hand through deaths and prostitution, but her addiction keeps her in the darkness. When her family tries to strike a match to help light her way, Nicole must choose between a life she can hardly remember, or a love for heroin she'll never forget.

    . . A riveting and anxiety-inducing read. Mike Pond tells his story of recovery from alcoholism with a brutally honest, warts-and-all approach that makes you want cheer for him and simultaneously slap him upside the head.” – Vancouver SunPsychotherapist Michael Pond is no stranger to the devastating consequences of alcoholism. He has helped hundreds of people conquer their addictions, but this knowledge did not prevent his own near-demise. In this riveting memoir, he recounts how he lost his Penticton-based practice, his home, and his family—all because of his drinking. After scores of visits to the ER, a tour of hellish recovery homes, a stint in intensive care for end-stage alcoholism, and jail, Pond devised his own personal plan for recovery. He met Maureen Palmer and together they investigated scientific alternatives to the rigid abstinence doctrine pushed by Alcoholics Anonymous.

    She writes about passion, about her fraught relationship with money, about adoring Barney’s while shopping at thrift stores, about breakups and the fertile ground between relationships, about roommates and rent, and about being superstitious (“why not, it imbues this harsh world of ours with a bit of magic.”)  At once heartwarming and darkly comic, How to Grow Up proves that the road less traveled may be a difficult one, but if you embrace life’s uncertainty and dust yourself off after every screw up, slowly but surely you just might make it to adulthood.

    After a privileged yet emotionally-starved childhood in Washington, she became hooked on ADHD medication provided by her psychiatrist father. This led to a dependence on Xanax and other prescription drugs at boarding school, and she experimented with cocaine, ecstasy… whatever came her way. By 26 she was a talented ‘doctor shopper’ who manipulated Upper East Side psychiatrists into giving her never-ending prescriptions; her life had become a twisted merry-go-round of parties and pills at night, and trying to hold down a high profile job at Condé Naste during the day.With a complete lack of self-pity and an honesty that is almost painful, Cat describes the crazed euphoria, terrifying comedowns and the horrendous guilt she feels lying to those who try to help her. Writing in a voice that is utterly magnetic – prompting comparisons to Brett Easton Ellis and Charles Bukowski – she captures something essential both about her generation and our times. Profoundly divisive and controversial, How to Murder Your Life is a unforgettable, charged account of a young female addict, so close to throwing her entire life away.

    It is also the introduction of a bold and talented literary voice. Before considering reading this book, please see the BookBrowse note on the book jacket/review page.BookBrowse Note: January 9th 2006: An article in the Smoking Gun claimed that James Frey (author of A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard) fabricated key parts of his books. They cited police records, court documents and interviews with law enforcement agents which belie a number of Frey's claims regarding criminal charges against him, jail terms and his fugitive status.In an interview with the Smoking Gun, Frey admitted that he had 'embellished central details' in A Million Little Pieces and backtracked on claims he made in the book.January 26th 2006. Frey's publisher stated that while it initially stood by him, after further questioning of the author, the house has "sadly come to the realization that a number of facts have been altered and incidents embellished." It will be adding a a publisher's note and author's note to all future editions of A Million Little Pieces.

     However in “Chasing a flawed sun” the author shows us how after breaking him down and almost taking his life several times, the battle with the drug did just that.  This is a true story.  A transparent story of the life of a young man in America, who, like many of our lost youth, found his way into the drug culture.  This story is an autopsy into the mind, heart and soul of an addict.  It begins at childhood and takes us through the thoughts, turmoil and inner conflicts of a person lost in the undercurrent of addiction, and ends in a climax of self discovery, and realization.It is a gripping tale of a suburban youth and his journey through the streets of Baltimore, institutions, prisons, addiction, and worst of all, his own mind.  What makes it so unique is the vulnerability and transparency with which it is told.       It is the goal of this story to not only to tell a vivid tale but to also share hope and experience with those who are actively struggling with their own demons, and to shed some light to those who have lost or are currently dealing with a loved one who is struggling with addiction, alcoholism and/or a lost sense of “self”.Daniel McGhee lives and owns several businesses just outside of Baltimore, Md.  He also owns a non-profit and works with addicts, children and homeless in his area.  In his eighteen years in recovery he’s learned to enjoy writing, fitness, and traveling the world.  He enjoys going to other countries either for relief work, exploration or just chasing the sun that never ceases. "Chasing a Flawed Sun is in turns beautiful and brutal. The book is profoundly insightful for someone who has felt the sting of addiction. It is a difficult subject to write about, but McGhee has done a great service in writing this book. Not only has Daniel McGhee survived hell and lived to tell the tale, but his words are an inspiration and can act as a guide for people still traversing that dark path, in a memoir that is at once merciless and uplifting."                                                                                                                                                         ~Self-Publishing Review, ★★★★½