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    White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin
    Unavailable
    White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin
    Unavailable
    White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin
    Ebook302 pages5 hours

    White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin

    By Michael Wesley Clune

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Clune’s gripping account of life inside the heroin underground reads like no other, as we enter the mind of the addict and navigate the world therein.

    How do you describe an addiction in which the drug of choice creates a hole in your memory, a “white out,” so that every time you use it is the first time--new, fascinating, and vivid? Michael W. Clune’s original, edgy yet literary telling of his own story takes us straight inside such an addiction--what he calls the Memory Disease.With black humor and quick, rhythmic prose, Clune’s gripping account of life inside the heroin underground reads like no other, as we enter the mind of the addict and navigate the world therein. Clune whisks us between the streets of Baltimore and the university campus, revealing his dual life while a graduate student teaching literature. We spiral downward with Clune--from nodding off in an abandoned row-house with a one-armed junkie and a murderous Jesus freak to scanning a crowded lecture hall for an enemy with a gun.After experiencing his descent into addiction, we go with him through detox, treatment, and finally into recovery as he returns to his childhood home and to the world of color. It is there that the Memory Disease and his heroin-induced white out begins to fade.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHazelden Publishing
    Release dateApr 1, 2013
    ISBN9781616494933
    Unavailable
    White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin

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    Reviews for White Out

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      I´ve read more than my share of midlife memoirs, and I enjoy them, but I don't always think I enjoy them for the right reasons. In a sense, these sort of "I came back from tragedy to write a book about it" volumes are sort of a Jenny Jones show for the literary set: salacious details, blissful sleaze, but none of the uncomfortable consequences that come with actually getting involved with drugs or having a couple of psychopaths for parents. This makes them fun, but somehow unserious, guilty pleasures from start to finish. Despite it's rather unexciting title, Michael W. Clune's "White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin" is miles better the average addiction memoir. This isn't just due to the quality of Clune's prose, though this isn't the first book that he's published, and his voice is clear and well-crafted. It's setting, the bad old town of Baltimore that would soon become beloved -- if that's the term -- to millions thanks to "The Wire" also helps, too. What really sets "White Out" apart, though, is its ambition: Clune spares us a few of the gritty details so that he can recontextualize heroin in terms of a host of Big Literary Issues. For heroin addicts, he informs is reader in a matter-of-fact, is far different than it is is for people living in the straight world. So is memory. So is the human body. And willpower, and pleasure, and a hundred other things. Clune makes heroin seem less like a run-of-the-mill illegal substance than a life-distorting, soul-destroying force that completely reconfigures every aspect of its users lives, including their pasts and their futures. The changes are immense, the damage unending. Just in terms of scope, "White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin" might be one of the most profound books about drug use ever written. It's written so skillfully and is so well-structured that it bursts the confines of the "midlife memoir" genre to become just a plain old good book whose author happened to spend some time on drugs. There's pain here, and loss, but mostly, there's just a very complete description of what being a heroin addict is like: the routines, the compulsions, the skewed logic, the upside-down priorities. The author, at the end, seems wiser for his experience but still deeply haunted by his former habits. There's no real sensationalism here, but its hard to imagine anyone making a better case against picking up a needle or sniffing a line than the one made here.

      2 people found this helpful