Loving Them Through It: Family of Addiction Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe loving someone through addiction. The substances include alcohol, prescription painkillers, methamphetamine, crack cocaine, codeine cough syrup, nyaope, ketamine, cannabis, a product sold at a gas station, and gambling. The writers include a plumber who stopped covering for his wife, a firefighter-paramedic father, a pastor of thirty-eight years, a stepfather left holding everything, a grandmother raising her grandson, a grandfather robbed by the boy he helped raise, a twin's mother, and a brother who drives his sister to a methadone clinic six mornings a week. They write from Swansea to Pune, Lagos, Manila, Nairobi and Johannesburg. They describe prison visits, changed locks, naloxone in a purse, a baby born in withdrawal, a brown bottle in the medicine cabinet, school fees drunk away, worrying across time zones, and a clinic where nobody spoke Vietnamese. Many write about family silence and shame, and about learning to talk so a son would listen. Some stories end in recovery, including one ten years on. Others do not: a father whose daughter is still on the street, a son who died at twenty-one while still using, an uncle who raised his nephew and lost him, and parents who spent four weeks beside their daughter in a liver ward.

Who it's for

For anyone who loves someone with an addiction, whether a parent, partner, sibling, grown child or grandparent, at the first shock, in the long middle, or after a loss.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 285 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.