An expressive account of one family’s struggles to help a child with serious addiction issues.
A woman struggles to cope with her son’s addictions.
With three decades of teaching and multiple books on addiction under her belt, Ketcham (co-author: The Pain Antidote: The Proven Program to Help You Stop Suffering from Chronic Pain, Avoid Addiction to Painkillers—and Reclaim Your Life, 2015, etc.) was considered an expert on the subject, but she was totally unprepared when she discovered her son, Ben, was addicted to drugs and alcohol. In this honest account, the author shares her doubts, fears, anger, and angst as she and her husband strove to help Ben in any way that they could. She readily admits she missed the beginning telltale signs of his drug use, which started in high school. “Addiction isn’t a choice,” she writes, “it’s not a moral failure, a maladaptive lifestyle habit, or a developmental learning disorder—it’s a brain disease that is both chronic and progressive.” Yet these knowledgeable words often brought little comfort as she attempted to help Ben, who fought against most of the help he was given, including expensive rehab treatments. Ketcham ponders whether she was too heavy-handed in her counseling and suggestions when Ben’s abuse became obvious, and she even questions her effectiveness as a mother. She chronicles her discussions of her work with kids in juvenile detention, and she uses excerpts from some of her earlier books to help clarify some of the ideas she explores. She also examines concepts of spirituality, forgiveness, and change as she relates the many years it took before Ben decided to get clean. The author’s hard-won wisdom and often unanswerable questions help readers see the far-reaching effects of alcohol and drug abuse, and the inclusion of comments from Ben demonstrates the pain and anguish felt on all sides of the situation.
An expressive account of one family’s struggles to help a child with serious addiction issues.Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62203-977-7
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Sounds True
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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