Randall Grange has been tricked into admitting herself into a treatment center and she doesn’t know why. She’s not a party hound like the others in her therapy group—but then again, she knows she can’t live without pills or booze. Raised by an abusive father, a detached mother, and a loving aunt and uncle, Randall both loves and hates her life. She’s awkward and a misfit. Her parents introduced … introduced her to alcohol and tranquilizers at a young age, ensuring that her teenage years would be full of bad choices, and by the time she’s twenty-three years old, she’s a full-blown drug addict, well acquainted with the miraculous power chemicals have to cure just about any problem she could possibly have—and she’s in more trouble than she’s ever known was possible.
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This novel provides an intimate portrait inside someone’s addiction. We can clearly see how our internal demons make us think that drugs and alcohol are the answer. The portrayal of the main character, a girl named Randall, is so honest that the reader can’t help but feel her pain. The story is a good reminder that children think that everything that is wrong must be their fault. This book also provides a good reminder that what we say to our children actually matters. It was heartbreaking how her brother’s attitude towards her was devastating to Randall’s sense of self. Her relationship with her parents was no better. The impact of having absolutely no allies in your family is beyond sad. It’s not hard to see how addiction runs in families, whether it be genetic or by exposure. Though a novel, the author clearly shows an intimate understanding both of addiction and the recovery experience, and I congratulate her on such a well-crafted story. You don’t need to have a history of addiction to want to read this book. It would be equally helpful to professionals trying to deal with the issue. I appreciate how the author doesn’t try to change your mind. She just tells it like it is. I loved the ending.
The prologue of J.A. Wright’s How to Grow an Addict alerts the reader, if the book’s title didn’t, that the novel’s central character, Randall, will end up in rehab for her addictions. With the same straightforward, appealing, if dispassionate voice, Randall’s first person narration of this story starts from her seven year old viewpoint to relate how she navigates the troubling dysfunction of her nuclear family. She reaches for support where she can find it, and finds trouble when she can’t. Long before she sees what’s to come, the reader dreads this quirky child’s future, and wishes she had an endless supply of the occasional love and resilience that barely see her through. Simply and directly written, How to Grow an Addict lets the events in Randall’s life dramatize how to fail a child. We cannot turn away from her, when others do, and are rewarded for our loyalty in this powerful story.
I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning reading J.A. Wright’s HOW TO GROW AN ADDICT: A NOVEL because it’s riveting and I couldn’t close the book without knowing how it ends. Dysfunction, chaos, loss, survival, and resiliency are elements that serve to tighten the screws in this gut-wrenching portrayal of recovery that will break your heart wide open.
This is not your grandfather’s story of addiction and recovery. It’s a raw tale, told vividly and honestly, about a little girl introduced to pills and booze–by her parents–at an early age. She spirals down and down until, at 23, she knows she’d better pull out, A cautionary tale, yet one imbued with hope.
This jaw-droopingly compelling novel picked up literary awards right and left. Told as a frank, first-person narrative, HOW TO GROW AN ADDICT (She Writes Press, 2015) is at once disturbing and charming. Randall, the narrator, was quite literally raised to be an addict, given booze and pills by her parents. It’s a long road that she takes to recovery, but every one of her experiences, thoughts and insights is worth its weight in gold.