The author is writing about her son's Stage IV Addiction. How it affected not only the addict himself, but his entire family. This is a cautionary tale about a son who not only found his drug accidently but also got the gene of addiction. In the beginning of her book she writes about the misconceptions of both addiction and the addict. When her son first started with his disease, the author had that gut feeling that this disease was going to take him down, and unfortunately she was correct. She discusses how she feels that the difference between enabling, and unconditional love is a very fine line. The fact that this is not a life of self-indulgence. Addiction is a life of self-destruction. When her son first started with his addiction, back in the 90s if you didn't have insurance, then you didn't get treatment and it remains that way today, unless you are court mandated into a program That she feels treatment at that point in time, was somehow lacking. Mental health issues were a crucial factor in their treatment. It seems that only recently society has realized this.
The author feels that the reality of the addict when he gets back into society is key to their recovery. They need to learn how to deal with their reality, and the systems must change in order for them to do so. Society seems to be scrambling because now the face of addiction can be any of us. It is at epidemic stage and it is all you read and hear about on the news. This is not a new disease, and this is not something that has just recently start to affect the ordinary person. This young man was not the typical face of addiction, you would not have picked him out of a crowd, as being the one to turn out to be a heroin addict, but he did. She feels that addiction is not only a serious mental health issue, but should also be staged like any other disease that has the capability of taking a person's life. For some of these addicts, rock bottom is death.
