This blog will serve as a first draft for my first (complete?) novel. I have tried writing some YA stories but they never seemed to work and I always came back to this. I welcome feedback, comments and constructive criticism from my readers. The contents of this blog will remain my intellectual property. Plagiarism will not be tolerated.
What follows is a work of fiction. it is not my story. I isn't even a true story. It is a story that is fabricated as I ask myself "What if.." How could life have been different if I made different choices? if other people in my life made different choices? What if I turned right instead of left? This is the basis for the working title. Where is this story going? How will it end? I really don't know. I have an outline, character descriptions and a whole bunch of notes, but it all can change at any time. It already has several times.
As I write, I draw upon my experiences living with active addiction in my life. I am not interested in recounting those events, rather it is the feelings that I am trying to convey to my readers. I hope that writing them will help me put words to them and put them in my past along with the active addiction. We live in a society where there is a pill for everything. Take a pill and you will feel better. That message is on our TVs and radios, in our magazines and plastered all over our doctors offices. Sometimes I think the exam room was decorated by the drug reps. We don't treat the problem, we medicate the symptoms. Unfortunately, this attitude has led us to an epidemic of drug addiction. Odds are that you know someone living with an addiction. That someone may even be you. Addiction is no longer confined to the slums, junkies in the streets or kids popping pills in the clubs. It is everywhere and it can be anyone. The stigma and the shame caused by addiction lead to a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, not just for the addict but for those that love him as well. There is help. There is hope. There is a better way to live.
"Help will always be given ... to those who ask for it."
~Albus Dumbledore
