I Am a Heroin Addict

This book is an outstanding account of a man's life. He deals with the abuse, by his father,through his addiction. You do not need to have experienced a drug addiction to feel the pain of disappointing your father. Farrell reveals his battle with addiction and demons from his childhood in an extremely real and raw account of his life. This is a story that does not sugar coat the sickness of drug addiction. This is a real American (human) story. My only regret, while reading the book, was with 70 pages left I knew there was not enough time to tell me everything I wanted to know. Farrell's writing leaves you wanting more every page...... Thank you for your honesty and sharing a real life story. I think this should be required reading for every high school/college student.

This book is an honest look into one mans life. There are no candy coated stories, just the brutal truth.

This book opened my eyes to the suffering and bleak drama of addiction. Its, at times disturbing, bluntess was stunning and yet overall very moving and inspiring. Rich Farrell led the gritty, dysfunctional life James Frey (Oprah's "Million Little Pieces" guy) pretended to lead - and he reveals it more vividly. Farrell's overcoming of his addiction is the real story - the story that will stay with you. Self overcoming is, in Farrell's extreme case - and in everyone's case - a huge part of the meaning of life. Well done.

"What's Left of Us" is a crowning achievement; a stunning revelation of a brilliant life almost permanently interrupted. This is a crowning accomplishment by one of the best author/journalists in America today. This is a fulfillment of themes Rich Farrell has previously explored in his award-winning HBO documentary. This story, however, is a first-person account of extreme heroin addiction, culminating in an inches-to-death experience and the road to redemption. It's a stunning narrative, and a mesmerizing read. Readers beware, however; renowned crime historian T. J. English's assertion that this book is "blunt and honest..." is an enormous understatement. This book is brutally blunt and honest. Rich Farrell's story couldn't be told as effectively any other way. This is not a darkly funny memoir in the Augesten Burroughs vein. It's unconditionally serious. Its details are often very graphic, and potentially disturbing to anyone who has led a relatively normal and stable life. Farrell as his own central character seeks to be neither likable nor admirable, but merely understood. This is a brilliant chronicle of events that occurred in Lowell, MA, during the month of March 1987, including an exhaustive description of seven days constituting Farrell's fifth and final stay at Lowell Detox center. Unlike the first four, the last one was not voluntary. Similar to Farrell's "A Criminal and an Irishman," "What's Left of Us" is remarkable for the way it presents non-Lowell residents with an accessible portrait in words of what areas as diverse as the Acre and Belvidere were like to live in during the period addressed in the book, and brings it home to the reader in a way that makes the nature of their landscape and culture fully graspable. You feel as if you are there in Lowell, MA, during these years. Rich Farrell's astonishing wordsmith capacity is demonstrated in the descriptive narrative recounting his day-to-day final experience at Lowell Detox. Few readers will find anything glamorous about it or most of the people chronicled within. No one would be likely to want to share the same experience. Yet his interaction with both the menial and professional staff there--and in particular that with the center's psychiatrist--are crucial to understanding how Farrell eventually dealt with his past inner demons, and how he's managed to stay straight now for over two decades. It makes this book, in my estimation, required reading for anyone contemplating a career in any aspect of the mental health or human services professions. By way of full discourse, I know and greatly admire both Rich Farrell and his wonderful mom, Margaret. I've worked with both of them. I've often referred to Rich as Brother Farrell, or, alternatively, Brother Fearghal. It all comes to his Gaelic gift of prose and storytelling, whether whimsical or, in the case of "What's Left of Us," tragic. His talent is innate and immense. Rich refers to himself as being a "crip

Richie was getting very good at copping a fix now, but if he didn't his body would kick back. His stomach would churn and the diarrhea would shoot out of him like the magma spewing out from a volcano. If he got a "hot shot" it wouldn't really matter because he'd be deader than Kelsey's nuts, but when you're dead you really don't care. What he did worry about was getting "cotton shot rush." If a minuscule piece of bacteria laden cotton fiber he used to filter impurities out of his heroin got loose and entered his bloodstream . . . well, let's just say the pain and agony were indescribable. He still would "roll the dice about a dozen times a day." Richard Farrell was beyond caring. Once upon a time Richie was just a normal kid from "The Acre" in Lowell, Massachusetts. He, his brother and parents lived this fairy tale existence in a nice house they eventually moved to. They were on the right side of the tracks, but that was all a façade. He'd been born a "cripple" and his father would push him mercilessly. He was going to be a football star and play for Notre Dame. His recurrent memories of abuse haunted him later in life. "Zebra stripes" didn't show and no one would ever know about the time his father lashed him to the chair with duct tape. He struggled to breathe as the tape went over his nose and mouth. The sound of his mother's "new, double-blade, electric carving knife" began to buzz and urine began to trickle down his leg. What goes on in this house, stays in this house. It was all part of growing up, or was it? The knee was shattered in a game and drug addiction soon followed. A little taste of Dr. Feelgood later caused him to wonder how he could even "survive one minute on the streets without heroin leading [him]." Once living on the streets, he continued to garner a small amount of respect by spinning his lie about playing for Notre Dame. Over and over his memories haunted him. "I could have saved my father's life that night on the kitchen floor. But instead I watched him die." He had to get a fix within ten minutes of rising. Enough was enough. He'd been to Lowell Detox so many times. It was time to get a hot shot with Nick and Joey. He inserted the needle and squeezed the plunger. "Shake down the thunder from the sky . . . " I hit a point in this book that disgusted me so badly I had to shut it. The disgust was not directed at Richie, but rather the attitude of those around him. Perhaps it was my own blasé attitude and inability to understand the problems people have working with those who are coping with extreme drug abuse. I kept on reading and like Joni Mitchell, "I've looked at clouds from both sides now." This is the best book I've read in some time and now, dear Richard, I'm waiting for a sequel. Thank you for helping us understand that "everybody has a war story."