REVIEW for Portrait of An Addict As a Young Man

Thank you goes out to the people at HarperCollins Canada for sending me a copy of this book.

TITLE:                 Portrait of An Addict As a Young Man
AUTHOR:            Bill Clegg
GENRE:               Memoir /addiction/recovery
RATING:             3 stars


I had heard some wonderful things about this book and, of course, because I am a fan of addiction/recovery books I was really looking forward to reading this one.



Unfortunately, for some reason this book just did not touch me all that much.

Although, of course, I admire the author for being brave enough to write his story, somehow the whole story felt "staged somehow". While the author explains his childhood - interlaced with present day actions that are clearly self-destructive - I struggled to really find the addict in him. It felt more as though the author was using his childhood as a reason to do what he did - instead of what, in my opinion, is a true addict's actions - i.e. being compelled to "use" in order to numb their feelings. Somehow, the author was doing it backwards and I kind of did not buy the whole premise of the book.

I was, in the end, disappointed with this whole book.