Clean - Amy Reed

Ali Mark
Dec 17, 2015
2 min read

Imagine Breakfast Club, but with a bunch of teenaged addicts.

Goodreads readers ranked this book a 4.05 and I'd recommend it if you're into:

crime
drug abuse/addiction
alcohol abuse/addiction
sexual assault
eating disorders
mental health

This review is more or less about the fact that this book does two things -

*If you're an addict, this book makes you want to get sober. Had I read this book as an addict in active addiction, I think I might have flushed my supply, called my would-be sponsor, and straightened up my act. It was enough that the author knew what addiction looked like in its three stages - before drugs, during active addiction, and after drugs. This is how life is separated, and this book nails the first two stages of addiction. As an addict, this book highlights everything we feel as young addicts - thinking we're just teenagers, experiencing life, we're just having a little too much fun with a hangover every morning.

*If you're not an addict, this book makes you understand what life is like for an addict. The things their families goes through; what the addict themselves go through (and yes, most of us smoke like chimneys). I think if I had no prior exposure to addiction, I would've been moved by this author's attempt to express addiction in its three stages, including the less-than-subtle anger most families feel towards their addict, despite the fact that you'd expect the families to be sympathetic.

Cons: My only true issue with this book, making it slightly less than perfect, was the strange formatting Reed used to bring in the secondary characters (if you could call anyone a secondary character). Advice: when you get to the person essays, and the questions from the therapist, read each character as a whole, not in choppy-parts. It's nearly impossible to fully comprehend all the information they're trying to shove at you when you're switching characters every paragraph. If it wasn't for this, and maybe the lack of the odd eating disorder plug, this could've been a perfect book.