I Want My Life Back
1st Edition
Published on 28. September 2012
392 pages
978-0-14-302697-6 (ISBN)
Description
'One is too many. A thousand is never enough.' 'Andrea arrived in rehab at the same time as me. We were in admissions together. I can't remember how many times she'd tried to get clean, but it was my eleventh institution and I was dyngi. For two days I listened to her withdrawal in a room just down the passage from mine. The screaming, the swearing, the crying - and the hideous, desperate ka-klung! of the bars on the side of the bed as she wrestled with the restraints that kept her tied to it. I don't know what damage they thought she could have done really. Andrea had had all the tips of her fingers amputated. She'd got gangrene from shooting up under her nails too many times ...' At the age of fifteen I already had a criminal record, busted by the drug squad for possession of an illegal substance. You'd think I'd have learnt a lesson, wouldn't you, but I'm still learning, even though I'm clean of street drugs now - well, just for today - and have a lot of clean time behind me. The hardest lesson of all for an addict is that the nightmare is never over and the powerful seduction of just one more high never ever goes away. The story in these pages is not a comfortable one.
It doesn't have an ending and I'm not even sure if it has a true beginning. Some of the time it may read like a bad dream. It isn't. It's my life you're holding in your hands. Don't let it be yours.
It doesn't have an ending and I'm not even sure if it has a true beginning. Some of the time it may read like a bad dream. It isn't. It's my life you're holding in your hands. Don't let it be yours.
More details
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
South Africa
Publishing group
Penguin Random House South Africa
Product notice
Reflowable
File size
0,34 MB
ISBN-13
978-0-14-302697-6 (9780143026976)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Steve Hamilton
I Want My Life Back
Book
09/2012
Penguin Books (South Africa)
€28.65
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Person
Steve Hamilton spent most of his youth and young adulthood fighting drug addiction. Armed only with a criminal record for possession of marijuana and other illegal substances, as well as dealing, he was expelled from school in Grade 9 and was sent to the army. During his military training he continued to take drugs and to supply to other users. He was sent to the Angolan border and saw duty during the turbulent 1980s both there and in the SA townships, experiences which further traumatised him and led to a spell in the psychiatric ward of One Mil Hospital in Pretoria. He moved deeper and deeper into the drugging underworld and eventually he left the army, dishonourably discharged, after his involvement in a motorcycle theft syndicate. Steve had a series of jobs but failed to hold down any of them for any length of time. Both dealing and using saw him arrested and jailed a number of times and his prison record and lack of education and skills did nothing to assist him in finding employment. It became Steve's personal crusade to help people fight the war against addiction and, in the early nineties, with the chilling foresight of one who has seen the worst there is to see, he predicted the tidal wave of lethal chemical substances which are so easily accessible in South Africa today. During part of his own recovery process he started counselling addicts in rehab clinics himself.
