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Tweaked: A Crystal Meth Memoir
 
 
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Tweaked: A Crystal Meth Memoir [Paperback]

Patrick Moore (Author)
3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)

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Book Description

June 1, 2006
“There are moments when I suddenly realize that I’m a nice boy from Iowa who is entirely comfortable sitting in a room of freaks.”

So begins Patrick Moore’s unforgettable account of life as a crystal meth addict—a “tweaker.” Like a wild ride down Alice’s rabbit hole with a guide who is darkly funny and heartbreakingly honest, Tweaked chronicles a twenty-year trip that stretches from Moore’s lonely childhood in Iowa with his grandmother, Zelma—an alcoholic artist who, when loaded, turns frozen food into crafts projects —to the day he sits, naked, in a Los Angeles rental, hallucinating about psycho-robbers while talking to a possum he’s sure is God. Along the way, there are acid trips at the V.F.W., Dexetrim study halls with his Bad Girl Posse in the seventies, teeth-grinding nights of dancing and anonymous sex in New York City’s hottest eighties clubs, taking pictures of Andy Warhol, losing friends and lovers, and navigating a Byzantine underworld of cookers, users, club kids, dealers, and colorful characters as intense as the drug itself. There is Lee, the glamorous, outré bad boy with a devastating wit and a taste for danger; Tony, the tweaker who likes to remove his eyebrows; Ding-Dong, the Depends-wearing, nearly blind housemate; Hisako, the artist and squatter with an impenetrable Japanese accent and a fondness for hot plate cooking; “Mother” Judy, the tough, butch rehab counselor who takes no prisoners, and countless others on the road from crystal meth hell to eventual sobriety.

Candid, gripping, and ultimately triumphant, Tweaked is that rarest of memoirs—a tale so vivid and personal in the telling it feels like fiction, but every word is true.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"This cautionary tale makes you both want and fear crystal meth, as Patrick Moore tells of the ecstatic erotic liberation the drug can bring, and then of the agonizing paranoia, anxiety, loneliness, and self-destructiveness that accompany addiction. But this is also a celebration of recovery, the narrative of one life in which horror didn't claim the ultimate triumph. Elegantly constructed, with a complex narrative structure that drives the reader forward, Tweaked is elegiac, searingly honest, and impossible to put down." --Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression and winner of the 2001 National Book Award for Nonfiction

"Observant, funny, and harrowing, Tweaked is an eye-opening, fasten-your-seatbelts ride in and out of the depths of meth madness." --Michael Musto, The Village Voice

"Tweaked is a spine-chilling journey into the absurd and tragic realities of drug and alcohol abuse and the painstakingly slow but spiritually redemptive path to recovery. At a time when much of the gay media has been slow to report the horrors caused by crystal methamphetamine addiction, Patrick Moore honestly and bravely bares his soul to show the world what is happening to people because of this drug. Most of all, this skillfully-written memoir leaves the reader with the greatest asset known for survival – hope." --Rich Merritt, author of Secrets of a Gay Marine Porn Star

" Don’t let the title fool you: Tweaked is so much more than a crystal memoir. It’s an immersion into a gritty, rarely seen L.A., a recollection of a sleazy downtown New York that no longer exists, an extended visit with an unforgettable, spitfire grandma in Iowa, and—most of all—a penetrating look inward at the lies we tell ourselves, no matter where we are. Patrick Moore writes with humor, grace and precision. His tender-hearted memoir is a book for anyone who’s ever found himself in the wrong place, in a messed up state of mind, but with just enough clarity—and hope—to know that the only way out is to tell the truth." --K.M. Soehnlein, author of The World of Normal Boys and You Can Say You Knew Me When

"Like a cat chronicling its nine lives, Patrick Moore describes in Tweaked each one of his harrowing brushes with mortality. In this eye-opening look at the often misunderstood world of crystal meth addiction, Moore will win you over with his audacity, honesty, and poignancy. Anyone who's ever considered trying crystal should read this book first -- it's not preachy or moralistic, but it might save your life." --Tom Dolby, author of The Trouble Boy

"Patrick Moore does something extraordinary in this engaging, haunting memoir--he makes the reader understand his simultaneous love affair with and fear of the dark world of addiction and obsession. Even those who have never entered the universe he writes about will come to understand how it seduces so many, calling to the searching and welcoming them with poisoned kisses. Moore takes one of the greatest challenges facing gay men and reveals the human side of a destructive force all too often hidden behind the facade of perfect bodies and sexual fantasy. He offers no answers and asks for no sympathy. He simply tells his story and, through it, the stories of so many others who have had their lives changed forever by Tina's sparkling lies. Impossible to put down and harder to forget, his story lingers long after the last page, asking the reader to question the roles that longing, hope, and fear play in our lives." --Michael Thomas Ford, author of Last Summer and Full Circle

"Tweaked is a page-turning, harrowing and ultimately uplifting memoir. Few have been able to speak with such lucidly about the crystal-meth addiction that has gripped so many gay men. Patrick Moore writes in a remarkably open and at times highly entertaining manner – laughing out loud at the sheer preposterousness of the world that had engulfed him, even as he vividly takes us on a trip through his personal house of horrors and, eventually, to his escape. He does an enormous service by offering the story of his successful battle against Tina as roadmap for others to follow." --Michelangelo Signorile, author of Hitting Hard


Product Details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Kensington (June 1, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0758212658
  • ISBN-13: 978-0758212658
  • Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #240,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Patrick Moore is an author, activist, producer, and counselor living in Los Angeles. As an author, Moore is best known for "Tweaked: A Crystal Meth Memoir," which tracks his descent into addiction and through the sometimes equally strange world of recovery. In 2004, Beacon Press published Moore's analysis of how AIDS had warped the legacy of sexual experimentation for gay men in "Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality." Moore's work as a journalist has appeared in The Advocate, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and the Chicago Tribune.

Earlier in his career, Moore was the Founding Director of the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS: a non-profit effort to preserve and present the cultural artifacts of the AIDS crisis. At the Estate Project, Moore pioneered the use of digital technology to preserve art works in several media and developed collaborative projects with the Guggenheim Museum, the Academy Film Archive, and the New York Public Library.

Moore has produced digital content for Yahoo! Health where he served as an "Expert Blogger" covering mental health and spirituality. He also produced video content for Yahoo! including a cooking show featuring Wolfgang Puck and a parenting series with the comic Julia Sweeney.

Currently, Moore works as a drug and alcohol counselor and is producing a documentary.

 

Customer Reviews

14 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.4 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Well-written, engaging, educational, but not much about meth addiction, September 29, 2006
This review is from: Tweaked: A Crystal Meth Memoir (Paperback)
I enjoyed this book---it certainly kept me turning pages throughout, and I finished it almost in one sitting. However, I would agree with some of the other reviewers in that the book seems to be more about Moore's sex addiction than his meth addiction. The book chronicles Moore's sexual escapades in 1980s New York and 1990s Los Angeles; it seems Moore just used meth and a host of other drugs to lubricate his sexual excesses. The only section of the book that exposes meth's dark underbelly is when he goes out to visit a "cooker" who lives in the California desert and cooks the drug in a trailer. I think a more apt title for the book would be "SCREWED" rather than TWEAKED due to its highly sexual content, but this book is worth a read nonetheless, especially if the ins and outs of pre-gentrification New York's sexual underground of the 80s and early 90s interests you.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating in Ways I Didn't Expect, May 12, 2007
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This review is from: Tweaked: A Crystal Meth Memoir (Paperback)
As someone who has heard a lot about crystal meth but who has no experience with it, I turned to this book to develop an understanding of why crystal meth has affected gay men and influenced HIV transmission as much as it has. I did learn a lot from this book, though I thought I would learn more about how crystal meth affects the body and mind, how it clouds and mind and encourages unsafe sex, and there was not as much of that in this book. Though there were many scenes showing the damaging effects of crystal, and Moore did not seem to hold back in any way describing the negatives of his life on crystal. This is a good book worth the time.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Looking at sobriety's dark and light sides, December 3, 2008
Patrick Moore presents a memoir that looks at his personal drug abuse as a gay man and his sobriety in the face of unrelenting temptations. Ultimately, the story is one of hope that begins in Iowa and takes the readers through dexatrim use in high school to a wild hallucination involving a possum in a Los Angeles garden. Cruising through clubs and cruising areas, as well as working with other addicts in recovery, Moore tells a fast-paced and sometimes moving story of holding his grip on sobriety continually in front of him. There are spots of true compassion and insight that add to the overall positive nature of this memoir in spite of real moments of despair, death, temptation, and self-doubt.
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