Leaving Dirty Jersey: A Crystal Meth Memoir [Paperback]

James Salant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 22, 2008

With his nickname, Dirty Jersey, tattooed on the inside of his left forearm, James Salant wanted everyone to know he was a tough guy.

At the age of eighteen, after one too many run-ins with the cops for drug possession, he left his upper-middle-class home in Princeton, New Jersey, for a stint at a rehab facility in Riverside, California. Instead of getting clean, he spent his year there shooting crystal meth and living as a petty criminal among not-so-petty ones until a near psychotic episode (among other things) convinced him to clean up.

In stark prose infused with heartbreaking insight, wicked humor, and complete veracity, Salant provides graphic descriptions of life on crystal meth -- the incredible sex drive, the paranoia, the cravings. He details the slang, the scams, and the psychoses, and weaves them into a narrative that is breathtakingly honest and authentic. Salant grapples with his attraction to the thuggish life, eschewing easy answers -- his parents, both therapists, were loving and supportive, and his family's subtle dysfunctions typical of almost any American family.

Exploring the allure and effects of the least understood drug of our time, Leaving Dirty Jersey is that rarity among memoirs -- a compulsively readable, superbly told story that is shocking precisely because it could happen to almost anyone.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In its first pages, this disturbing memoir sees upper middle-class New Jersey 18-year-old Salant plopped in a California drug recovery center by his parents, where he attempts "kicking heroin among strangers" some 3,000 miles from home. Before long, Salant has ditched the recovery center and embarked on a chaotic, crime-riddled year addicted to crystal meth and the whopping sex life that's part of its allure. Supported by both his well-meaning parents and by selling drugs, Salant deals with a cast of dysfunctional junkies at turns caring, comical and highly unsettling. Though he never addresses the big picture-the so-called epidemic of meth use in America-there's plenty of gory details about life as a drug addict, from a dealer shooting meth into her neck while her daughter watches TV in the next room, to an uncomfortable, drug-fueled threesome with a violent paranoiac. The tale of Salant's recovery, however, is remarkably abrupt; Savant explains he "didn't decide to turn my life around. I just stopped trying so hard to ruin it." Savant's story is a depressing, at times disgusting, and largely demoralizing tale; as such, it offers an unrelentingly bleak account of one man's encounter with America's crystal meth culture, for readers who have the stomach for it.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"This book stands out. The atmosphere and the detail with which the bit players are brought to life recall William S. Burroughs's classic Junky." -- Library Journal

"Normally I hate to tell anyone what to do, or what to think, or read. But I honestly believe every parent should read this book. And every teenager on the verge of a drug trip should read it. And everyone else, too. It's that good, that important." -- Dava Sobel, author of Longitude

"Salant makes his mark by telling his tale plainly and well." -- New York Times Book Review

"Salant's story offers an unrelentingly bleak account of one man's encounter with America's crystal meth culture." -- Publishers Weekly

"If prose were a mind-altering substance, James Salant would be your neighbourhood pusher. Lord knows, the man will make an addict of you." -- Koren Zailckas, New York Times bestselling author of Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood

"Salant gives us a searing, sordid account of his 19th year, spent shooting and smoking meth and heroin in California...he nails the hellish tedium and despair of the addict. His memoir is a dirty bomb lobbed from the trenches of crank addiction." -- Salon.com

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Gallery Books (April 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416955119
• ISBN-13: 978-1416955115
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #132,875 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You can tell an addict is lying if his lips are moving -- but Salant comes clean, January 20, 2008

By 

Jessica Lux (Rosamond, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Leaving Dirty Jersey: A Crystal Meth Memoir (Hardcover)

Leaving Dirty Jersey is author James Salant's account of his years as Jimmy -- an eighteen-year-old preppie Jersey kid turned heroin and meth addict. Jimmy got into a major scuffle with his hometown police during a drug raid, so his well-meaning parents took their lawyer's advice to tuck him away in an out-of-state rehab program to wait out his trial date. He left New Jersey for the Riverside, CA Get Straight For Life program, in which he was introduced to a broad network of local connections before moving with his new crowd into a sober-living facility.

Within weeks, Jimmy is using drugs again. For a year, he drifts between boarding houses, motels, and meth couches of Riverside, wheedling money out of his desperate parents, selling drugs, and desperately working on his street cred. He runs with a crowd of flaky, unreliable druggies, each of whom look out only for him or herself. Their scores and hustles are strangely enrapturing, and Salant's dialog is gritty and sharp. Days consist of nothing more than theft, lies, scrams, and scores, and Salant admits to it all. When he finally embraces sobriety, after a year drifting in Riverside, Salant credits his peers in recovery with breaking him of his need to posture as a tough guy. It takes years, but Salant learned that there's a lot more to life than looking cool for your "friends."

Leaving Dirty Jersey is a quick read with a straightforward message and little to no recovery-speak. At the end of the book, within one page, Jimmy goes from near-death to a new life as James, the author with recovery under his belt and a great girl. However, Salant is nothing if not brutally honest about the downfalls of addiction - he takes credit for both his screw-ups and successes in this gritty but pleasantly brief memoir.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Salant Comes Clean in Gritty Memoir, May 26, 2007

By 

Amanda C. Waas (Buffalo, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Leaving Dirty Jersey: A Crystal Meth Memoir (Hardcover)

If you look at James Salant's author photo on the back of this book, you see a baby-faced kid, admittedly very cute, trying to look tough. Leaving Dirty Jersey is 23-year-old Salant's story of his crippling drug addiction, and his author photo is misleading. All his life, he wanted to be tough and now, with this book, all he wants to do is come clean, in more ways than one.

The book is gritty and real, allowing people who have never had more than a few beers a look at the other side. In his writing, Salant is both self-conscious and courageous, as there are things in this book that you'd never want to tell anyone, let alone everyone.

With tales of banging female junkies in dirty hotel rooms, shooting up in trailer park bathrooms, and desperately masturbating to laptop porn, Leaving Dirty Jersey is not for the faint of heart.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reality reading at its grittiest., June 4, 2007

By 

T.S. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Leaving Dirty Jersey: A Crystal Meth Memoir (Hardcover)

Leaving Dirty Jersey is a (very) detailed and gritty account of a young man spiraling down through the perils of the drug-world. Salant's writing is both enthralling and droll--you're on the edge of your seat as he hangs with volatile criminals but also reminded of how tedious the dealer life is as he spends a lot of time waiting around on couches for people to stop "sketching" and pay him. Some of the writing is hard to swallow, there are raunchy scenes, uncomfortable threesomes, and a whole lot of aggressive homo-eroticism, but Salant's humorous and good-natured voice will keep you routing for him throughout. This book is seriously addicting, as Salant's mind unravels, you feel yourself going a little crazy too. You may start to "sketch" and read the whole thing in one sitting.