EEC273 - Chovanes

The story of a girl who is doing everything to hurt herself and a mother who would try anything to try to save her. True, she had stopped coming down for breakfast. Stayed up in her room, ran out the door late for school, missed the bus and had to have a ride. But you think, well, that's how they are, aren't they, teenagers? And you try to remember how you were, but you were different and the times were different and it was so long ago. And she's suddenly so angry at you, but then, another time, she's just the same. She's just your little girl. You sit with her and you talk about something, or you go shopping for school clothes and everything seems all right. And you forget how you stood in her room and how the center of your stomach felt so cold. When you found the cigarette. When you found the blue pipe. When you found the little bag she said was aspirin.

What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheff's journey through his son Nic's addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery. Before Nic Sheff 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 subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3 A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the hospital?), the rehabs. His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry and stress took a tremendous toll. But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and refused to give up on Nic. Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional rollercoaster of loving a child who seems beyond help.

This riveting memoir of survival and transformation reveals the brutal details of the worst that can happen to an ordinary family and how they triumphed over adversity. It describes the true story of a daughter's decline into alcohol and drug addiction, prostitution and homelessness, and her mother's attempts to rescue her yet protect herself and her other children. Written as a dual narrative, mother and daughter give their first hand accounts of the years lost to addiction and despair, and the subsequent recovery and reconciliation. formation reveals all the brutal details of the worst that can happen to an ordinary family and how they triumphed over adversity.

Garnering a vast amount of attention from young people and parents, Smashed became a media sensation in the US and New York Times bestseller. Eye-opening and utterly gripping, Koren'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. Smashed is a sober look at how Zailckas drank from the age of 14 to some horrific results (stomach pumping, memory loss etc), what it took for her to realise she had to stop drinking and it is ultimately a literary debut destined to become a classic.

During his early teens, Jeff Bratton started using drugs. At first, alcohol and pot, but quickly he spiraled into using cocaine, ketamine, crystal meth and eventually heroin.How could this wonderful son, loving brother, and star athlete lose himself to drugs? How could his parents be so clueless? How could his mother, the long-term head of a private school, be so blind? "Stagli vicino", an Italian recovering addict told the author. "Stay close-never leave him, even when he is most unlovable." This is not a book about saving a child. It is a book about what it means to stay close to a loved one gripped by addiction. It is about one son who came home and one mother who never gave up hope. Stay Close is one mother's tough, honest, and intimate tale that chronicles her son's severe drug addiction, as it corroded all relationships from the inside out. It is a story of deep trauma and deep despair, but also of deep hope-and healing.Here is Libby Cataldi's story about dealing with addiction without withdrawing love, learning to trust again while remaining attuned to lies, and the cautious triumph of staying clean one day at a time. He told her, "Mom, never quit believing." And she didn't. 

This New York Times bestselling memoir of a young man's addiction to methamphetamine tells a raw, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful tale of the road from relapse to recovery and complements his father's parallel memoir, Beautiful Boy. Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age eleven. In the years that followed, he would regularly smoke pot, do cocaine and Ecstasy, and develop addictions to crystal meth and heroin. Even so, he felt like he would always be able to quit and put his life together whenever he needed to. It took a violent relapse one summer in California to convince him otherwise. In a voice that is raw and honest, Nic spares no detail in telling us the compelling, heartbreaking, and true story of his relapse and the road to recovery. As we watch Nic plunge the mental and physical depths of drug addiction, he paints a picture for us of a person at odds with his past, with his family, with his substances, and with himself. It's a harrowing portrait - but not one without hope.

Kyle Keegan was like many teenagers: eager to fit in at school, he experimented with alcohol and drugs. Soon, his abuse of these substances surpassed experimentation and turned into a ruthless addiction to heroin that nearly destroyed his life. Now an adult and in recovery, Keegan tells his remarkable story in Chasing the High. Starting with his early days of alcohol and drug use, Keegan charts his decline into a life of crime and homelessness as his need for heroin quickly overpowered all thoughts of family and friends, of right and wrong. In collaboration with science writer Beryl Lieff Benderly, Keegan uses these experiences to offer guidance and practical advice to other young people who may be struggling with substance abuse. In straightforward, easy-to-understand language, and drawing on the expertise of psychiatrist Howard Moss, Keegan discusses what is known about the neurobiology of addiction in young people, how to seek treatment, and how to get the most out of professional help. He also covers such topics as available therapies used to combat addiction, how to talk to family and friends about substance abuse, and how to navigate risky situations. The result is both an absorbing memoir and a useful resource that will help to ease the hopelessness and uncertainty caused by a substance abuse problem.