Customer Reviews

Leaving Dirty Jersey: A Crystal Meth Memoir

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Having dealt with meth addicts in my work, I was really interested to read a book from a junkie's perspective. Mr. Salant's story is unusual, in my experience, in that he was shooting heroin before every going to meth. As a result, he almost immediately begins intraveneous meth use, which is a pretty rare -- and serious -- starting point.

However, his descent into the meth world, the life driven by the single-minded quest for the next hit, the deceit, the overwhelming paranoia, and the moral and physical decay are presented vividly. You keep thinking, why would anyone want to even start down this path?

A disturbing part of this story is the parents' enabling role in their son's ongoing addiction, especially in light of their older son's similar descent into the drug world. Their naivete and gullibility jarred me in light of their educated, middle class upbringing. Mr. Salant consistently cons them out of money and sympathy. But I wonder if as a parent I would be able to engage in the "tough love" he appears to have needed.

The primary reason that I gave this book 4 stars, and not 5, is the author's failure to discuss fully the difficulty of getting and remaining sober, when he eventually chooses to do so. In my observations, meth addiction is one of the most difficult to overcome, particularly on a long-term basis due to the permanent damage which it wreaks on one's brain. I would have liked the book to flesh out that ongoing process, so that readers don't come away with an unrealistic understanding of the complexity of getting and staying "straight."

Nevertheless, this is an interesting and vivid work of the lives and thought processes of meth additcts.

I read about this book in the NY Times Book Review and was surprised that such a young author could work his way to the top in so little time. I devoured the book in two nights but it was not like some Tom Clancy type of melt-in-your-mouth candy. It was much more in-depth and developed. In his upfront and self-deprecating manner Salant leads you through his world of trying to be accepted amongst the unaccepted. The drug experiences are vivid and frightening. The people he comes across are as believable as they are ruthless. From each harrowing adventure Salant manages to come through unscathed even in often near-death situations. If you are interested in hearing a dark tale of the struggle for light in the human soul then I highly suggest this memoir.

Salant's book is by far the best memoir of drug addiction I've ever read.

It's precisely the relative absence of shock-for-shock's sake that made this book such a satisfying read. As described by Salant, a drug addict's world isn't exciting; it's just sordid (which Salant acknlowedges in recounting some of the gross and/or unsavory things he did while addicted. Those of us who like to read about unsavory things done by other people - and I'm one of them - do get their money's worth in this memoir). But it's his writing that struck me as singular.

Told by a less talented writer, this story could have been ho-hum. But Salant writes with great clarity and economy, and seems objective as he can be in a book about himself. He does talk about writing poetry in the book, though sometimes he lied about that so his parents would send him money, so I'm not sure how much poetry he actually wrote!

But as for his prose, Salant writes as if he's been writing forever - he's that good. He's an extremely talented young writer, and thanks to that, this book wasn't the cobbled-together addiction exploitation book it very easily could have been.

Another reviewer said he (or she) would have liked more about his recovery. I think that might have been too much; I think Salant was right in leaving off where he did. And for an addict or alcoholic, there is always the chance of relapse; it's risky talking about your "recovery" when you're still in your early 20s. That's just my view, of course.

But this one's absolutely well worth reading.

Being an overly-bored college student, I have picked up some pretty interesting and random reads. This is, without a doubt, one of them. I was recommended this book by a friend who is interested in this whole drug genre too. I don't know what it is but having no past in drug abuse, I just find it simply fascinating.

This book is about the author himself - a twenty-some guy who, in his late teens, becomes involved in the dark drug realm. It's obvious at first he wants to break free from addiction but it slowly eats him up.

This tale is about his battles and trips from rehab to trailer parks. You meet some interesting friends along the way and some paragraphs you'd wish you hadn't read.

Like the previous reviewers have said, it is definitely not for the faint of heart as it does get gritty but it is as real as it can get. This author is very intelligent and that's awesome. As a newcomer, i'd love to see what type of work he puts out next.

That's right. This thing is a horrible downer. It's also fabulous writing by, if you can believe it, an early 20-something reformed crystal meth/heroin addict. This kid obviously had talent before he became a druggie, or he wouldn't have been able to write this well. But there are questions. What happened to the cast of characters? Did they read about themselves? And wouldn't more than a few of them want to hunt the author down and exact a little revenge for portraying them so unsparingly in his memoir of a year as a druggie on the streets of Riverside, Ca., my former home? The book does ring true, though. He gets the addresses and the descriptions of Riverside's desert seaminess exactly right. Does this stuff really go on there? I never saw it, but I wasn't a druggie. You'll be unable to put this book down. But you'll wonder what made him do these things, given his privileged background. His poor parents. What chumps! He's evidently made it up to them by writing his story so well. Don't miss this piece of literature, in the tradition of Kerouac's "On The Road."

This book is a gut wrenching and real account of how meth and heroin takes over a life and grinds it into the pavement. If you know anyone who has ever been addicted to drugs you will relate to this story, how the drugs take over your body, mind and soul and how that affects the people around you and that love you. The stealing, the crime, the sex, the crazy and obsessive behavior. It is all here. If you don't know anyone addicted to drugs, once you read this book you will have a better understanding of why they act the way they do. Understanding is half the battle.

This was for sure one of the best memoirs I've read, and the best addiction books out there. It stays with you after. I've read A LOT of addiction books to try to understand a friend I had that was an addict. I can't believe how the author got out alive and how honest he is! The things he encounters are not pretty and shamfeful and embarrassing, yet he eloquently describes his experiences without holding back.

This book is well written, a page turner, and extremely graphic and real. He's so young to have gone through so much and I liked at the end how he told the readers how hard it was for his family and gf to read it. Very compelling and a vdifferent from the self pity addiction books like "Blackout Girl" that I've been reading lately.