Spotlight: Some Are Sicker Than Others

Some Are Sicker Than Others

Andrew Seaward

In A.A. they say to wait at least a year before entering into a relationship, the idea being before you can love someone else, you must first learn how to love yourself. But what if loving yourself just isn’t possible? What if in order to love yourself, you must first know that you can be loved?

During a mandated recovery, Monty Miller, a young, suicidal alcoholic, falls deeply in love with a cocaine addict named Vicky, who offers him a reprieve from his life of self-sabotage. Against his sponsor’s warnings, Monty hinges his entire recovery on Vicky, believing he can stay sober for her rather than doing it for himself. But when Vicky is killed in a hit-and-run on their way home from a meeting, Monty is forced to confront the truth; he didn’t really love her. He was just using her as a way to cope without alcohol.

Filled with the guilt of this revelation, Monty embarks on a mission to drink himself to death. But, his family intervenes and has him committed to Sanctuary, a rehabilitation facility high in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. There he meets Dave Bell, a former all-American track star turned narcissistic crack addict, and the driver responsible for Vicky’s death.

Can Monty forgive Dave for his unspeakable atrocity and finally find the courage to forgive himself? Or will he follow his addiction to its inevitable conclusion, using self-pity and blame as excuses to give up on life?

Based on the author’s own personal experience with substance abuse and addictive relationships, SOME ARE SICKER THAN OTHERS transcends the clichés of the typical recovery story by exploring the incomprehensible demoralization of addiction and the thin, blurred line between codependence and true love.

Author Bio:

Name a hospital in Pennsylvania; I’ve been there. A rehab in Texas; I’ve stayed there. I’ve been strapped down to hospital beds, thrown into drunk tanks, and locked in padded rooms no bigger than a broom closet. I’ve woken up on railroad tracks, passed out on park benches, and even slept in a dumpster once because I was too drunk to realize what it was. And for what? A moment of numbness, a flicker of tranquility? No. I realize now, that the reason I drank was because I was too afraid to admit who I really was. I’m an artist. A storyteller. A writer. An author. It took me a long time to finally admit this, and now that I have, I can’t stop.

My debut novel, SOME ARE SICKER THAN OTHERS, takes you on a hellish journey inside the diseased mind of the addict. From a codependent alcoholic wracked by an obsession to drink himself to death to a former all-American track star turned washed-up high school volleyball coach with a dependency on crack…the characters in my novel will haunt, taunt, and challenge your preconceived notions of what it means to be an addict or alcoholic. Some of you will laugh, some will cry, others will see themselves in the characters’ lives. Either way, I hope you enjoy the story, because, in the end, it’s not only my story…it’s everybody’s.

Do you have a tag line: I used to think I was a pretty sick person. Then my parents sent me to drug & alcohol rehab in Anaheim, CA. There I learned a universal truth about addicts and alcoholics; though we may all be sick…Some Are Sicker Than Others.

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Excerpt:    

“It was a beautiful night. The moon was out and the stars were shining, like diamonds impregnated in a coal-black sky. What a wonderful night to be clean and sober. What a wonderful night to be alive. To think, all he had to do was quit drinking and he could’ve felt like this his entire life—no more shaking, no more seizing, no more getting up to puke in the middle of the night. If he’d just listened to his parents and stopped a little sooner, he could’ve avoided all those years of suffering and pain. All those nights of lying face down in a puddle of his own blood and urine, praying for God to come and take him away, his hands around a bottle, his head above the porcelain, and that sick, vile poison bubbling inside his veins. Those trips to the emergency room in some random state hospital just so he could get pumped full of fluids and strapped down to a bed, while nurses with bad breath, bad hair, and bad makeup stuck a tube down his dick just so he could pee. Christ, what a fucking nightmare. Thank god it was finally all over. Thank god he finally found a way to stay clean.”