JACKET NOTES | Milton Schorr on writing “Addict”

I have a strange hobby — I like to get lost. Wherever I am, I want to be somewhere else. I want to forget where I am.

When I was a child, I found innocent ways of getting lost. Reading. The fantastic tales of The Hardy Boys, Roald Dahl, then Wilbur Smith. Hours spent, till the chill of a now cold bath brought me back again, and a toe on the hot tap sent me back to the story.

A little older, I discovered other avenues. Eating. The pleasure of a custard doughnut chomped quickly at the local petrol station, so that I didn’t have to share it with my sister. “You’re selfish,” a stranger said to me once, pinning me down with the truth. He knew it exactly. I was hiding, getting lost in the joy of the thick cream and sugar, lost in my own head.

And then my first taste of the transition from innocent childhood to the array of pleasures that await a growing boy. Girls, romance, sexual pleasure, and other things. What would I choose?

I followed my heart. I discovered that stealing was a way to take me away, the thrill of it, and secret cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana... and finally heroin at the age of 17.

I used hard drugs for 12 years, and in between found new techniques — getting lost in work, lost in a relationship, lost in exercise, a washing machine sloshing me from one habit to the next, never landing on solid ground.

At 25, finally, I hit rock bottom. After a shift delivering pizzas I went out for just one beer, and ended up losing my soul in a meth-soaked night, knowing I was meant to see my son the following day. The world coalesced. I saw that I could not get lost anymore, because it was clear that soon I’d do it so well that I’d disappear completely.

And so I found recovery.

For the last two decades I have been sober and working a programme of self-discovery, and in all of it I have learned one thing. Addiction is about getting lost, escaping myself, and recovery is about flipping that around and journeying into the one place I was never happy to be. Me. My own body. My own world around me.

I wrote Addict to explain this. I feel that too often books about addiction are sensationalised, addiction becomes a heroic act, rebellious, a tale of flying too close to the sun. That might be how it looks sometimes, but really addiction is not big. It’s small, and mundane, an itch right inside the fabric, with horrible consequences, that can be turned around.

Addict was difficult to write, difficult to relive what I’ve forgotten, to immerse myself in the unpleasantness that prompted me to try and lose myself, and it was difficult to imagine such personal things being on display. It has been worth it, however, beyond measure. It’s given me a clearer understanding of me, and I’m certain it will have the same effect when others compare their own tale to mine.

Addict by Milton Schorr is published by Penguin Random House