| Author: |
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James Salant
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| Title: |
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Leaving Dirty Jersey |
| Moochable copies: |
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No copies available |
| Amazon suggests: |
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| Recommended: |
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| Topics: |
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| Published in: |
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English |
| Binding: |
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Paperback |
| Pages: |
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352 |
| Date: |
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2007-04-01 |
| ISBN: |
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0091920337 |
| Publisher: |
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Ebury |
| Weight: |
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0.84 pounds |
| Size: |
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0.0 x 0.0 x 0.0 inches |
| Edition: |
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1st ed |
Amazon prices: |
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| Previous givers: |
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1 Kehaulani2009 (USA: HI) |
| Previous moochers: |
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1 NYC Books Through Bars (USA: NY) |
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| Description: |
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Product Description
'When I was eighteen years old and a drug addict, I left my home and upper-middle-class, educated family in Princeton, NJ, having been sent to Riverside, California, ostensibly for rehabilitation. Instead, I ended up spending almost exactly one year shooting crystal meth and living as a petty criminal...' "Leaving Dirty Jersey" is the compellingly crafted tale of James Salant's descent into crystal meth addiction. Written at the age of only twenty-two, this memoir chronicles his year-long addiction with complete honesty and heartbreaking candour. Brought up in a stable, middle-class family, the second son of two therapists, he was introduced to heroin at seventeen by his brother Joe. A spell in rehab introduced him to a bunch of ex-convicts, and he soon fell into the thuggish, drifting lifestyle of meth addiction. He details the specific behaviour induced by using crystal meth - 'sketching' is meth-induced paranoia, 'tweaking' is becoming compulsively enthralled in an activity that can be as simple as tying a shoe or finding a vein, and 'rooting' is a form of tweaking that involves looking for something that doesn't exist - and skilfully weaves the scams and the psychoses into the narrative in a voice that is so open and authentic it's hard to believe he is still so young. With graphic descriptions of life on crystal meth - the insatiable sex drive, the paranoia, the desperate need for more drugs to sustain the high - James' writing mimics the emotional detachment of the drug and the wired yet aimless life it induces. It was to take a near-psychotic event to finally get him to clean up. Given the nickname "Dirty Jersey", while living as a tough guy-junkie in California, James had it tattooed on the inside of his left arm. There, it remains as a graphic and permanent reminder of his past life as a junkie.
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| URL: |
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http://bookmooch.com/0091920337 |
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