Mary Beth O’Connor began drinking alcohol and using drugs as a young teen. She progressed quickly to intravenous methamphetamine drug use and spent two decades as a junkie. This book is the story of her childhood and young adult years. She shares in great detail about the trauma, abuse and neglect that pushed her to try substances and get hooked. Essentially, the riskiness of drug use mirrored her family life and felt safe to her. However, in her words, “Life of the addict is not fun, not exciting, not glamorous. It’s a miserable, all-consuming, agonizing, chaotic existence.”
While the story is inspirational, over 75% is about her drug use and could be traumatizing to readers as it details physical, emotional, sexual, and mental abuse. Only 25% of the book addresses her recovery journey. I wanted more of that part of the story and more wisdom like “Just not today” (her mantra when deciding whether to use drugs or not) and “I no longer was an active addict but rather had an addiction history.”
I do appreciate the questionnaire at the end that can help readers decide if they’re ready for recovery. And Judge O’Connor is an advocate for each person taking their own journey to recovery, whether that includes religion or not. In fact, she is heavily involved in LifeRing Secular Recovery and the She Recovers Foundation.
Also, she’s careful to not put the blame solely on her violent, neglectful parents. She takes responsibility for her continuing patterns of behavior and denial that led her to use drugs for years. And she protects the privacy of her family in many places.

How do trauma and mental health issues drive addiction? In this gritty memoir, I was surprised that O'Connor spends the whole first half of the book remembering her childhood of neglect, abuse, and drugs, with almost overly graphic detail. She retells her life as if writing a novel, complete with re-imagined dialogue and graphic scenes of sexual abuse. She insightfully connects the dysfunction and disconnection in her early life to her later addiction, explaining the deep-rooted forces that can prevent recovery.

I appreciated the way O'Connor humanizes the recovery process by combining scientific models of addiction with her lived trauma and mental health issues, but I found the violent scenes almost too graphic. By the second half of the book, I'd wanted to hear more about the author building a law career while in recovery, and her journey through recovery programs as an atheist.

Addiction can be such a tough subject to approach with honesty and authenticity, and I really admire the way the author was able to do so in her writing of this book. While heart wrenching at times, I was able to get such an understanding of Beth, and her journey, and would absolutely recommend this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.
This is such an inspiring book. The 12 step recovery program is not a one size fits all program. I'm so happy the author didn't give up her recovery because of this. It's so important that there are other programs addicts can go through to gain sobriety. She has overcome an incredible amount of trauma and abuse to become a successful woman.

This book engrossed me to the end.

I read a lot of books on addiction and recovery and this book had me seriously upset. At the beginning to about the middle (or even a bit further), I kept thinking "there is no way she can get out of this llife" - yes, what the author was living did not open up a lot of opportunity to no longer live that life..

There is so much courage here. There is so much optimism here.

O'Connor and her story gives hope.

Very well written - with depth and honesty.

Mary Beth was rock bottom of the intravenous drug addiction
She has come to a wonderful success as a judge
She has been clean and sober
I had an ARC