BEFORE I LEAVE YOU

Imbeault’s candid memoir traces a turbulent life of childhood abuse, drug addiction, and suicidal ideation to explore what makes life worth living.

The author’s story begins with one of his suicide attempts in adulthood, and over the course of the book, he tells of his recurrent struggles with depression and drug addiction. He writes that he helped to run software company10Count, which he started, and that he married a woman named Perrine within a year of meeting her on an online dating site. Later, however, painful memories of a childhood rape and the experience of going through a divorce sent the author into a dangerous downward spiral, which often involved abusing the drug MDMA, sexual experimentation, and trips to the party scene in Las Vegas. He finally found his way toward redemption when he fell in love with a woman named Mira and became a father. Imbeault’s narrative is often repetitive in its details, but the repetition effectively mirrors the cycle of drug addiction and efforts to get sober. Although the story can, at times, seem cyclical, unexpected turns of phrase will help to reengage the reader, as when the author writes, “Countless hours sailed by while television shows and movies I wasn’t paying attention to bullied the silence out of the room.” Furthermore, the book bounces back and forth between moments in the author’s childhood and his adulthood, which effectively breaks up the narrative. The quieter moments will allow the reader to see “the depths of self-hatred” that consumed Imbeault. He also notes that his childhood rape “lived in my periphery like trees we pass on a train and I dared not look at it directly,” and he tells of how he managed to forgive the man who abused him.

An unflinching examination of addiction and an engaging account of healing.