Outskirts Press, INC.

A Journey Through Drug Addiction and Alcoholism

Michael “Curly” Sanford is a young man caught in a web of drugs and alcohol. A simple, happy life of adolescent leisure and adventure quickly deteriorates into an uncontrolled morass of incomprehensible demoralization as he moves from one city to another. He encounters situations with others arising out of their drunken rage, dalliance with street drugs, physical interactions and even experiences violence and death. Following the pattern of Jack Kerouac’s Beat Generation, searching for his own 21st century version of “the meaning of life”, his intellectual and academic pursuits quickly become subverted by alcohol, drugs and sexual exploitation. He meets men and women from several walks of life, each facing their own demons, and sees life through the eyes of other men and women. The book moves rapidly down his path of self-destruction and has two opposing endings from which the readers may choose. He finds final solace when he realizes that, in spite of his disease of addiction, his troubles were basically of his own making and the solution lay in finally deciding to take action and work a program of recovery. His life or death depends on this. Serendipity as well as planned action struggle against one another in the life of this and every addict and alcoholic. The novel is an exciting, action-packed journey but also a meditation on drug addiction and alcoholism written by an author who has worked in the field of recovery for over thirty years.