Download or read book Crackhead written by Lisa Lennox and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-20 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lisa Lennox transports readers to the heart of the crack era—the South Bronx, New York City, 1989. In the late 1980s and early 90s, the crack epidemic swept through inner city communities like the plague. Mothers abandoned their children and took to the street for a hit. Fathers sold everything they owned to get a taste. The crackhead was rampant. Some neighborhoods were never the same. Enter Laci Johnson, a beautiful, smart, privileged teenage girl from across town, who teams up with The South Bronx Bitches—an infamous girl group known for chasing men and money. When the SBB becomes envious of Laci they devise a plan to destroy her life. Finding love in the most unexpected of places, Laci turns to a local drug dealer to help save her and heal the wounds of her new addiction. Through Laci and a host of entertaining characters, Crackhead vividly captures the essence of an era and the devastating, sometimes fatal, consequences of addiction.

Download or read book Memoirs of a Bootlegger S Daughter written by Renee' Carter Tench and published by LifeRich Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For author Renee Carter Tench, April 17, 2008, was the first day of the rest of her life. It was the day she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Tench spent more and more time reflecting on her past experiences and examining her life. In Memoirs of a Bootleggers Daughter, she tries to understand the reason and purpose behind all of the chaos in growing up the child of alcoholic parents. The lone survivor of the Carter family who lived at the end of the dirt road in Hickory, North Carolina, Tench shares the stories of her tumultuous childhood. She tells how, by the grace of God and taking advantage of the opportunities He provided, she broke the cycle of alcoholism in her family, a cycle that began even before her grandfather and father became bootleggers. She often felt looked down on because of the spectacle she and her family often made. Memoirs of a Bootleggers Daughter narrates how Tench started out at the end of one dirt road and ended up at the end of another and the wild journey in between, a journey she would be happy to take again.

Download or read book Memoirs from a Daughter of Crackheads written by Keisha Khanyahl and published by . This book was released on 2021-05 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is a memoir about my childhood

Download or read book High Price written by Carl Hart and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: High Price is the harrowing and inspiring memoir of neuroscientist Carl Hart, a man who grew up in one of Miami’s toughest neighborhoods and, determined to make a difference as an adult, tirelessly applies his scientific training to help save real lives. Young Carl didn't see the value of school, studying just enough to keep him on the basketball team. Today, he is a cutting-edge neuroscientist—Columbia University’s first tenured African American professor in the sciences—whose landmark, controversial research is redefining our understanding of addiction. In this provocative and eye-opening memoir, Dr. Carl Hart recalls his journey of self-discovery, how he escaped a life of crime and drugs and avoided becoming one of the crack addicts he now studies. Interweaving past and present, Hart goes beyond the hype as he examines the relationship between drugs and pleasure, choice, and motivation, both in the brain and in society. His findings shed new light on common ideas about race, poverty, and drugs, and explain why current policies are failing.

Download or read book Before the Rain written by Luisita López Torregrosa and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A seductive memoir of a life-changing affair during a time of revolution as it unfolds over a decade and across three continents, surprising both lovers with the power and urgency of love.

Download or read book Teardown written by Gordon Young and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "After living in San Francisco for fifteen years, journalist Gordon Young found himself yearning for his Rust Belt hometown: Flint, Michigan, the birthplace of General Motors and the “star” of the Michael Moore documentary Roger & Me. Hoping to rediscover and help a place that had once boasted one of the world’s highest per capita income levels but had become one of the country's most impoverished and dangerous cities, he returned to Flint with the intention of buying a house. What he found was a place of stark contrasts and dramatic stories, where an exotic dancer could afford a lavish mansion, speculators scooped up cheap houses by the dozen on eBay, and arson was often the quickest route to neighborhood beautification. He also uncovered the misguided policies, flawed leadership, and unforgiving economic trends that lead to disasters like the Flint water crisis. Updated with a new preface, Young skillfully blends personal memoir, historical inquiry, and interviews with Flint residents, constructing a vibrant tale of a once-thriving city still fighting - despite overwhelming odds - to rise from the ashes. Hard-hitting, insightful, and often painfully funny, Teardown reminds us that cities are ultimately defined by the people who live there."--Back cover.

Download or read book Pill Head written by Joshua Lyon and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2009-07-07 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compelling, honest book investigates the growing epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse among today's Generation Rx. Through gripping profiles and heartbreaking confessions, this memoir dares to uncover the reality -- the addiction, the withdrawal, and the recovery -- of this newest generation of pill poppers. Joshua Lyon was no stranger to substance abuse. By the time he was seventeen, he had already found sanctuary in pot, cocaine, Ecstasy, and mushrooms -- just to name a few. Ten years later, on assignment for Jane magazine, he found himself with a two-inch-thick bottle of Vicodin in his hands and only one decision to make: dispose of the bottle or give in to his curiosity. He chose the latter. In a matter of weeks he'd found his perfect drug. In the early half of this decade, purchasing painkillers without a doctor was as easy as going online and checking the spam filter in your inbox. The accessibility of these drugs -- paired with a false perception of their safety -- contributed to their epidemic-like spread throughout America's twenty-something youth, a group dubbed Generation Rx. Pill Head is Joshua Lyon's harrowing and bold account of this generation, and it's also a memoir about his own struggle to recover from his addiction to painkillers. The story of so many who have shared this experience--from discovery to addiction to rehabilitation -- Pill Head follows the lives of several young people much like Joshua and dares to blow open the cultural phenomena of America's newest pill-popping generation. Marrying the journalist's eye with the addict's mind, Joshua takes readers through the shocking and often painful profiles of recreational users and suffering addicts as they fight to recover. Pill Head is not only a memoir of descent, but of endurance and of determination. Ultimately, it is a story of encouragement for anyone who is wrestling to overcome addiction, and anyone who is looking for the strength to heal.

Download or read book My Friend Leonard written by James Frey and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-06-16 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps the most unconventional and literally breathtaking father-son story you'll ever read, My Friend Leonard pulls you immediately and deeply into a relationship as unusual as it is inspiring. The father figure is Leonard, the high-living, recovering coke addict "West Coast Director of a large Italian-American finance firm" (read: mobster) who helped to keep James Frey clean in A Million Little Pieces. The son is, of course, James, damaged perhaps beyond repair by years of crack and alcohol addiction-and by more than a few cruel tricks of fate. James embarks on his post-rehab existence in Chicago emotionally devastated, broke, and afraid to get close to other people. But then Leonard comes back into his life, and everything changes. Leonard offers his "son" lucrative—if illegal and slightly dangerous—employment. He teaches James to enjoy life, sober, for the first time. He instructs him in the art of "living boldly," pushes him to pursue his passion for writing, and provides a watchful and supportive veil of protection under which James can get his life together. Both Leonard's and James's careers flourish…but then Leonard vanishes. When the reasons behind his mysterious absence are revealed, the book opens up in unexpected emotional ways. My Friend Leonard showcases a brilliant and energetic young writer rising to important new challenges—displaying surprising warmth, humor, and maturity—without losing his intensity. This book proves that one of the most provocative literary voices of his generation is also one of the most emphatically human.

Download or read book Crack written by David Farber and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The crack cocaine years: from deviant globalization to the 'get money' culture of late twentieth-century America.

Download or read book American Drug Addict written by Brett Douglas and published by . This book was released on 2017-06-14 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My name is Brett. I'm a college educated man who once was a husband of 26 years with two children, three businesses, and a large home with an actual white picket fence. I'm also a drug addict. And I have a tale to tell. My story has everything: sex, death, pain, atheism, God, jail, marriage, divorce, heresy, homosexuality, physics, traffic fatalities, computer science, video games, cinnamon toothpicks, Barry Manilow, Nine Inch Nails, pornography, breasts, used tampons, strippers, venereal disease, abortion, prostitutes, AIDS, racism, suicide, infidelity, public nudity, anti-Semitism, marijuana, alcohol, pawn shops, drug dealers, needles, acid, ecstasy, crack, heroin, pain pills, withdrawal, interventions, rehabs, product tampering, road rage, vandalism, elderly abuse, grave desecration, arson, identity theft, burglary, armed robbery, and murder. But more importantly, it's about the despair of addiction and the absolute certainty that it can be overcome. Recovery is not simply abstinence, but a process of growing up. I spent my entire life searching for the key to long-term sobriety. I would like to share with you what I have learned

Download or read book It s All Love written by Marita Golden and published by Crown. This book was released on 2009-02-03 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In It’s All Love, Black writers celebrate the complexity, power, danger, and glory of love in all its many forms: romantic, familial, communal, and sacred. Editor Marita Golden recounts the morning she woke up certain that she would meet her soul mate in “My Own Happy Ending”; memoirist Reginald Dwayne Betts, in a piece he calls “Learning the Name Dad,” writes stirringly about serving time in prison and how that transformed his life for the better; New York Times bestselling author Pearl Cleage is at her best in the delicate, touching “Missing You”; award-winning author David Anthony Durham enraptures readers with his “An Act of Faith”; New York Times bestselling author L. A. Banks is both funny and wise in her beautiful essay on discovering love as a child, “Two Cents and a Question.” And the poetry of love is here, too—from Gwendolyn Brooks’s classic “Black Wedding Song” to works by Nikki Giovanni, E. Ethelbert Miller, and Kwame Alexander. It’s All Love is a dazzling, delightfully diverse exploration of the wonderful gift of love.

Download or read book Bad Choices Make Good Stories written by Oliver Markus Malloy and published by Bookmaester. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The strange true story of the first influencer Oliver, a hacker living in Germany, meets Donna online. She's an American girl living in New York. After chatting and talking on the phone for months, he finally decides to surprise her with a visit. But he soon finds out that things are not what they appeared to be, and that this visit will change his life forever. “Nobody has ever killed themselves over a broken arm. But every day, thousands of people kill themselves because of a broken heart. Why? Because emotional pain hurts much worse than physical pain.” -Oliver Markus Malloy, Bad Choices Make Good Stories “Don't ever think you're better than a drug addict, because your brain works the same as theirs. You have the same circuits. And drugs would affect your brain in the same way it affects theirs. The same thought process that makes them screw up over and over again would make you screw up over and over as well, if you were in their shoes. You probably already are doing it, just not with heroin or crack, but with food or cigarettes, or something else you shouldn't be doing.” -Oliver Markus Malloy, Bad Choices Make Good Stories "A must read. One of those rare books that sucks you in from the first to the last page." ★★★★★ - Amazon Review (Alternate cover edition)

Download or read book Helen s Scars written by Johanna Sparrow and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-06-04 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone, has a story to tell, I've just been contemplating if the world was ready to hear mine. You would be surprised at who will try to stop you from telling your story as if it will affect them. Where were those so-called family members when I was killing myself on the streets looking for love? I am here only by the grace of God. I have scars and my scars cover me from head to toe. Isn't it funny how in the midst of your darkest hours of life and sin that darkness tries to make you laugh? It makes you forget about all the sorrow and pain it put you through before issuing you another gut-wrenching blow of misfortune? But, life never really offered me a laugh. I found my comfort by diving into a life of drugs and prostitution. My life was anything but perfect. And I knocked busters on their ass, men twice my size to prove that, I would not be taken advantage of in these streets. Fighting my brothers and sisters was a way of life. My family outcast me and my mamma turned her back to me while I was treated like trash in my own family. Abuse, neglect, suicide, drug addiction and prostitution were a part of my darkest hours of life. Could it be that my mind has been trying to outrun my pain and sorrow all these years? Or is it that my pain doesn't want me to forget what has happened? I thought that if I got married life would change for me, but looking back on it and laughing now, married life did not treat me any better. And that's because my husband was strung out on heroin and running the streets sleeping with crackheads and whores. My family outcast me and my husband beat me. I laid down to die as a way to escape the pain I was feeling, but death didn't want me, not then. How did I get myself out of such a predicament? I did by the grace and mercy of God. I know that diamonds are precious stones. They are ugly to look at in their natural state and found amongst rocks and dirt walked on by people who don't know their worth. I was a diamond and did not know my worth so long ago. I was stepped on in life and by people I loved and who I thought loved me. I added to my darkest hours with my own hands by the things that I was doing; I don't deny it. Today I am delivered, no longer living in life's darkest hours. I've survived my hell on earth and not ashamed to tell my story. Getting here wasn't easy, I cried many nights, but I am here strong standing in God's mercy and grace. I've overcome it all and if I can survive my darkest hours of life and find peace and happiness, so can you.

Download or read book Leaving Breezy Street written by Brenda Myers-Powell and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2021-06-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Told in an inimitable voice, Leaving Breezy Street is the stunning account of Brenda Myers-Powell’s brutal and beautiful life. “Careful—don’t think prostitution is just about money. It’s never just the money. It’s about slipping in at all the wrong places. Getting into dangerous situations and getting out of them. That’s exciting. That’s what you want. But you want something else, too.” What did Brenda Myers-Powell want? When she turned to prostitution at the age of fifteen, she wanted to support her two baby daughters and have a little money for herself. She was pretty and funny as hell, and although she called herself “Breezy,” she was also tough—a survivor in every sense of the word. Over the next twenty-five years, she would move across the country, finding new pimps, parties, drugs, and endless, profound heartache. And she would begin to want something else, something huge: a life of dignity, self-acceptance, and love. Astonishingly, she managed to find the strength to break from an unsparing world and save not only herself but also future Breezys. We have no say into which worlds we are born. But sometimes we can find a way out.

Download or read book Beautiful Things written by Hunter Biden and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hunter Biden recounts his descent into substance abuse and his tortuous path to sobriety. The story ends with where Hunter is today

Download or read book Bridget Jones Mad About the Boy written by Helen Fielding and published by Random House India. This book was released on 2013-10-16 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Helen Fielding first wrote Bridget Jones’s Diary, charting the life of a 30-something singleton in London in the 1990s, she introduced readers to one of the most beloved characters in modern literature. The book was published in 40 countries, sold more than 15 million copies worldwide, and spawned a best-selling sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. The two books were turned into major blockbuster films starring Renée Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. With her hotly anticipated third instalment, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Fielding introduces us to a whole new enticing phase of Bridget’s life set in contemporary London, including the challenges of maintaining sex appeal as the years roll by and the nightmare of drunken texting, the skinny jean, the disastrous email cc, total lack of twitter followers, and TVs that need 90 buttons and three remotes to simply turn on. An uproariously funny novel of modern life, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is a triumphant return of our favourite Everywoman.

Download or read book House to House written by David Bellavia and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-25 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 8 November 2004, the largest battle of the War on Terror began, with the US Army's assault on Fallujah and its network of tens of thousands of insurgents hiding in fortified bunkers, on rooftops, and inside booby-trapped houses. For Sgt. David Bellavia of 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, it quickly turned into a battle on foot, from street to street and house to house. On the second day, he and his men laid siege to a mosque, only to be driven to a rooftop and surrounded, before heavy artillery could smash through to rescue them. By the third day, Bellavia charges an insurgent-filled house and finds himself trapped with six enemy fighters. One by one, he shoots, wrestles, stabs, and kills five of them, until his men arrive to take care of the final target. It is one of the most hair-raising battle stories of any age -- yet it does not spell the end of Bellavia's service. It would take serveral more weeks before the Battle of Fallujah finally came to a close, with Bellavia, miraculously, alive. In the words of the author: "HOUSE TO HOUSE holds nothing back. It is a raw, gritty look at killing and combat and how men react to it. It is gut-wrenching, shocking and brutal. It is honest. It is not a glorification of war. Yet it will not shy from acknowledging this: sometimes it takes something as terrible as war for the full beauty of the human spirit to emerge."