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4.26 AVERAGE
4.26 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
emotional
I read this book in the original Norwegian 1982 release, recommended and lent me by an acquaintance. It is falling apart. The fragrance of the disintegrating glue had the aroma that book lovers get high on. This book is about other, more harmful highs. I had no idea that it was such a thing until I looked it up on goodreads. Although the events described here are 40 years old, this book is still available in print.
Having now read it, I understand why. It's a rather unique account of the young German drug addict Christiane. How she got into drugs by hanging with the "wrong" crowd that just happened to be her friends. How she went from maruijana to LSD to heroin. How she became a child prostitute to fund her habit. How she tried to get herself out of the addiction, to no avail. Christiane's friends are in the same position.
In the middle of the book is a letter found on one Christiane's overdosed junkie friends. In it he writes that he killed himself because - parphrasing - "all junkies cause their friends and families harm. A junkie destroys not just himself, but also other people. That being a drug addict is the worst of fates. So what drives young people into such a mess? Let this be a warning to all those that stand before the choice: shall I try just once? Idiots, just look at me!"
The treatment programs available at the end of 1970's were based on adult users. The main premise was voluntary admission. None of the set-up was directed at drug abusers that were still children. The despair of Christiane's mother is shown through her own words, intermittently through the book.
This is an eye-opening book, although it shows aspects of life that one would rather not see. Just this morning I read a headline in the paper that the yearly death rate from illegal drugs in the United States is now higher than the number of people killed in traffic. It does not seem that the problem has gotten smaller.
Having now read it, I understand why. It's a rather unique account of the young German drug addict Christiane. How she got into drugs by hanging with the "wrong" crowd that just happened to be her friends. How she went from maruijana to LSD to heroin. How she became a child prostitute to fund her habit. How she tried to get herself out of the addiction, to no avail. Christiane's friends are in the same position.
In the middle of the book is a letter found on one Christiane's overdosed junkie friends. In it he writes that he killed himself because - parphrasing - "all junkies cause their friends and families harm. A junkie destroys not just himself, but also other people. That being a drug addict is the worst of fates. So what drives young people into such a mess? Let this be a warning to all those that stand before the choice: shall I try just once? Idiots, just look at me!"
The treatment programs available at the end of 1970's were based on adult users. The main premise was voluntary admission. None of the set-up was directed at drug abusers that were still children. The despair of Christiane's mother is shown through her own words, intermittently through the book.
This is an eye-opening book, although it shows aspects of life that one would rather not see. Just this morning I read a headline in the paper that the yearly death rate from illegal drugs in the United States is now higher than the number of people killed in traffic. It does not seem that the problem has gotten smaller.
That was a tough read. Not because of the language, which is fairly simple and easy to read. But because of the theme. This is even amplified by the simple language, that makes it more relatable and real. After half of the book I kinda had enough of it, because it was quite depressing to read. But after all it is a very good book and I would definitely recommend to read it, if one is in the right mood.
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
dark
sad
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
One of my goals this year is reading more non-fiction books and rereading books that I enjoyed in my childhood/teenage years to see how my opinions changed. I read this one back in primary school because we had to watch the movie and read the book so we would never take the drugs- this book was as horrifying and shocking as it was when I first read it. I do remember reading the other translation that had pictures inside - but even without those pictures the book was equally horrifying to read. That other translation was also a bit better because this one had a lot of random english words added in and it was so jarring and annoying to read.
This book was written after a series of interviews with the author - Christiane F. She started taking drugs when she was 12 - and it escalated to using heroine at 14. She was also prostituting herself to get the heroine she needed. She nearly died a lot of times and she even attempted to take her own life believing that there is no help for her because it was so hard to get help - the children taking drugs were everywhere in Germany and they started younger and younger - and a lot of doctors/hospitals saw them as either hopeless cases that will die anyways- as you can see when she is taken to the hospital after her livers start to give out or they don't want to accept them because it wouldn't look good if they had a child on drugs stay in the hospital- and the places that were helping people get clean were overrun and full - and there was an abundance of people and places taking advantage of kids on drugs- like the scientology center she eventually went to - where she was supposed to get better but they were really lenient and the only therapy they had wasn't really a therapy so it helped nobody.
This book also talks about her mother and father and how both of them were in denial because there is no way that their kid would take drugs - even though she was rapidly losing weight and having liver problems. She did eventually get clean and she wrote another book later- I might get to it I might not - certainly not right away because this was a pretty heavy read and I want to take a break from this topic - that is still very relevant today for now. I might give her other book a shot though.
This book was written after a series of interviews with the author - Christiane F. She started taking drugs when she was 12 - and it escalated to using heroine at 14. She was also prostituting herself to get the heroine she needed. She nearly died a lot of times and she even attempted to take her own life believing that there is no help for her because it was so hard to get help - the children taking drugs were everywhere in Germany and they started younger and younger - and a lot of doctors/hospitals saw them as either hopeless cases that will die anyways- as you can see when she is taken to the hospital after her livers start to give out or they don't want to accept them because it wouldn't look good if they had a child on drugs stay in the hospital- and the places that were helping people get clean were overrun and full - and there was an abundance of people and places taking advantage of kids on drugs- like the scientology center she eventually went to - where she was supposed to get better but they were really lenient and the only therapy they had wasn't really a therapy so it helped nobody.
This book also talks about her mother and father and how both of them were in denial because there is no way that their kid would take drugs - even though she was rapidly losing weight and having liver problems. She did eventually get clean and she wrote another book later- I might get to it I might not - certainly not right away because this was a pretty heavy read and I want to take a break from this topic - that is still very relevant today for now. I might give her other book a shot though.