You can tell an addict is lying if his lips are moving -- but Salant comes clean

books:


	• Leaving Dirty Jersey: A Crystal Meth Memoir James Salant Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2007 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

incredible read

i was blown away by how interesting and inspiring a book about the life of guy on drugs could be. He was so detailed in his writing that you can tell that he has a gift as a writer and an amazing story to go along with it. It was a very hard book to put down and there was never any moments in the book that i just wanted to skip ahead because i was being bored with unnecessary details. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a good read!

Leaving Dirty Jersey : an authentic drug addiction memoir

Salant's book is by far the best memoir of drug addiction I've ever read.

It's precisely the relative absence of shock-for-shock's sake that made this book such a satisfying read. As described by Salant, a drug addict's world isn't exciting; it's just sordid (which Salant acknlowedges in recounting some of the gross and/or unsavory things he did while addicted. Those of us who like to read about unsavory things done by other people - and I'm one of them - do get their money's worth in this memoir). But it's his writing that struck me as singular.

Told by a less talented writer, this story could have been ho-hum. But Salant writes with great clarity and economy, and seems objective as he can be in a book about himself. He does talk about writing poetry in the book, though sometimes he lied about that so his parents would send him money, so I'm not sure how much poetry he actually wrote!

But as for his prose, Salant writes as if he's been writing forever - he's that good. He's an extremely talented young writer, and thanks to that, this book wasn't the cobbled-together addiction exploitation book it very easily could have been.

Another reviewer said he (or she) would have liked more about his recovery. I think that might have been too much; I think Salant was right in leaving off where he did. And for an addict or alcoholic, there is always the chance of relapse; it's risky talking about your "recovery" when you're still in your early 20s. That's just my view, of course.

But this one's absolutely well worth reading.

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The Downward Spiral.....

Bored, tired of reading books with facts and statistics? Yes, so was I.

This book is a great, fun read. The main character Jim (the author James Salant) keeps you on the edge of your seat.

James doesnt waste your time trying to give you statistics on drugs, drug use or even how meth is produced.

This is his story of addiction, from beginning to end. Its not a pretty journey through the countryside, but rather a long walk down a dirty, dangerous back alley.

Meth use is a disgusting, but growing problem in the U.S. This book gives you one mans glimpse of what it was like being hooked on it!!!

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awsome book

this book is scary, it opens your eye to the love familys have even when your child is slowly killing himself with drugs. the author has a great talent, and is so very hot! the book does not let you put it down. again a great book.

You can tell an addict is lying if his lips are moving -- but Salant comes clean

Leaving Dirty Jersey is author James Salant's account of his years as Jimmy -- an eighteen-year-old preppie Jersey kid turned heroin and meth addict. Jimmy got into a major scuffle with his hometown police during a drug raid, so his well-meaning parents took their lawyer's advice to tuck him away in an out-of-state rehab program to wait out his trial date. He left New Jersey for the Riverside, CA Get Straight For Life program, in which he was introduced to a broad network of local connections before moving with his new crowd into a sober-living facility.

Within weeks, Jimmy is using drugs again. For a year, he drifts between boarding houses, motels, and meth couches of Riverside, wheedling money out of his desperate parents, selling drugs, and desperately working on his street cred. He runs with a crowd of flaky, unreliable druggies, each of whom look out only for him or herself. Their scores and hustles are strangely enrapturing, and Salant's dialog is gritty and sharp. Days consist of nothing more than theft, lies, scrams, and scores, and Salant admits to it all. When he finally embraces sobriety, after a year drifting in Riverside, Salant credits his peers in recovery with breaking him of his need to posture as a tough guy. It takes years, but Salant learned that there's a lot more to life than looking cool for your "friends."

Leaving Dirty Jersey is a quick read with a straightforward message and little to no recovery-speak. At the end of the book, within one page, Jimmy goes from near-death to a new life as James, the author with recovery under his belt and a great girl. However, Salant is nothing if not brutally honest about the downfalls of addiction - he takes credit for both his screw-ups and successes in this gritty but pleasantly brief memoir.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

With his nickname, Dirty Jersey, tattooed on the inside of his left forearm, James Salant wanted everyone to know he was a tough guy.

At the age of eighteen, after one too many run-ins with the cops for drug possession, he left his upper-middle-class home in Princeton, New Jersey, for a stint at a rehab facility in Riverside, California. Instead of getting clean, he spent his year there shooting crystal meth and living as a petty criminal among not-so-petty ones until a near psychotic episode (among other things) convinced him to clean up.

In stark prose infused with heartbreaking insight, wicked humor, and complete veracity, Salant provides graphic descriptions of life on crystal meth -- the incredible sex drive, the paranoia, the cravings. He details the slang, the scams, and the psychoses, and weaves them into a narrative that is breathtakingly honest and authentic. Salant grapples with his attraction to the thuggish life, eschewing easy answers -- his parents, both therapists, were loving and supportive, and his family's subtle dysfunctions typical of almost any American family.

Exploring the allure and effects of the least understood drug of our time, Leaving Dirty Jersey is that rarity among memoirs -- a compulsively readable, superbly told story that is shocking precisely because it could happen to almost anyone.

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