Trouble Is a Gift: A Story of Addiction, Recovery & Hope

“But finally, there I was alone in this apartment, sitting in a chair, staring at the radiator waiting for the little guy to crawl out from behind it. Knowing the bottle was going to be empty in another minute. Wondering how I’m going to get money to buy a new one or if I should just kill myself and leap into hell feet first. That was my defining moment. The bottom of that bottle.” So began James Cusack’s hand-over-fist climb out of the abyss of his alcoholism, chronicled in his book Trouble Is a Gift. The book opens with a description of his own struggles with the substance — what he can remember of them. Raised in an immigrant Irish family in Harlem, Cusack recalls that alcohol was a normal part of life. When he was four years old, he writes, he passed out after drinking the dregs of guests’ glasses at a family wedding. And throughout his childhood the cure for any illness was a hot toddy with whiskey. Reading his early stories we get the picture of a tough kid, complete with scabs on his knuckles from fighting, who grows up into a hard-fighting, hard-drinking young man. After a stint in the Army Air Corp — notable mainly for beer-fueled brawls — Cusack’s downward spiral continues, to the point of hallucinating about “the little guy” behind the radiator. Getting off alcohol is no easy task, physically or psychologically. As a medical student, I have helped care for a number of chronic alcoholics who have been hospitalized to wean them safely off their...
Source: Psych Central - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tags: Addictions Alcoholism Book Reviews General Motivation and Inspiration Personal Stories Substance Abuse Alcohol Abuse Drug rehabilitation hope James Cusack recovery Source Type: news