Leaving Dirty Jersey: A Crystal Meth Memoir

New
Paperback
2008
$8.84

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. This resulted in a spell in rehab where he met a bunch of ex-convicts, and he soon fell into the thuggish, drifting lifestyle of meth addiction. It was to take a near-psychotic event to finally get him to clean up. 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. His voice is so open and authentic, it is hard to believe he is still so young. 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.

Synopsis

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. This resulted in a spell in rehab where he met a bunch of ex-convicts, and he soon fell into the thuggish, drifting lifestyle of meth addiction. It was to take a near-psychotic event to finally get him to clean up. 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. His voice is so open and authentic, it is hard to believe he is still so young. 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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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 352
Publisher: Ebury Press
Published: 03 Jan 2008
ISBN 10: 0091920345
ISBN 13: 9780091920340
Book Overview: The extraordinary true story of a young man's descent into crystal meth addiction and his struggle to get clean

Media Reviews

If prose were a mind-altering substance, James Salant would be your neighbourhood pusher. Lord knows, the man will make an addict of you -- Koren Zailckas, author of SMASHED: GROWING UP A DRUNK GIRL
Normally I hate to tell anyone what to do, or what to think, or read. But I honestly believe every parent should read this book. And every teenager on the verge of a drug trip should read it. And everyone else, too. It's that good, that important -- Dava Sobel, author of LONGITUDE
Leaving Dirty Jersey is a harrowing, pitiful account of one guy's demise into full scale addiction and insanity ... Up there with Jim Carroll's The Basketball Diaries for drug rites of passage books * Blowback Magazine *
Like watching a car crash, the gruesome details - drug deals gone wrong, violence and seedy motels - make the book compulsive reading * Big Issue *
Completely addictive ... brilliant * Word Magazine *

Author Bio

James Salant has been clean since September 2003. After his release from a court-mandated stay at a rehabilitation programme he has lived in New Jersey, working as office manager an educational consulting firm which manages an academy for students who are experiencing difficulties, and as a floor trainer at a health club in Princeton.