1 out of 4 stars
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Ripcord Recovery by T.T. Sawyer is an anecdotal treatise of the author's addiction to alcohol and drugs. In this non-fiction novel, the author narrates his addiction at an early age, eventual rehabilitation, relapses and subsequent awakening. His determination to fight his relapse leads him to conduct research on the possibility of a certain drug as his last resort. Will the experiment finally end his predicament or push him closer to a death spiral?
The only thing that I liked about the book was it’s timely. News reports regarding suicide committed by people from different walks of life have risen to an alarming level and apparently, most of the cause of death was from a drug overdose.
I got confused while I was reading the first few chapters because the author was vague on what kind of rehab he submitted himself for on certain time periods. He would be narrating his relapse and rehab for his alcohol problem, and on the same breath would mention something about drug cessation. He would be talking about drug addiction and would mention something about treatment for his smoking. It went like this several times that I managed to gift myself a headache and it had me re-reading previous paragraphs to understand. The only thing that was clear to me was, he needed treatment for several problems: alcoholism, drug addiction, smoking and other psychological issues!
Why did he suffer a relapse after more than two decades of sobriety? This was a question that stuck in my mind. He never divulged what precipitated him to drink alcohol or take drugs again. It would be beneficial to his purpose of recounting his experiences if he explained the reason than merely saying he relapsed. Logically, if he could remain sober for 22 years, he must have encountered a difficult situation for him to have a relapse. He offered three reasons, and yet I could not accept them as valid.
For me, not providing enough backgrounds on the reasons for his addictions was not a sensible action. This book would have effectively served its purpose if only he had presented it in a concise, logical manner. Truth to tell, I ended up confused and was left with so many unanswered questions. What impacted me and sank in my mind was, it was a win-win situation for the author: giving up one illegal drug for another one, legal it may be in other countries. I was tempted to stop reading and ignore the book completely, but I held on because I was a bit curious on where the story will go. I should not have persevered because I only got disappointed in the end.
There were so many grammatical errors, right from the first chapter and continued until the conclusion. I observed many sentences that lacked punctuation marks even before I was halfway through with the book. Apparently, the author did not use proofreading tools.
I give it 1 out of 4 stars. I did not give a 2 for the following reasons: the topic of drug addiction represents an extremely sensitive issue and, in my opinion, was handled carelessly by the author; there were many grammatical errors, and I did not obtain any valuable insight from the book.
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Ripcord Recovery
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