The Fix: Living with a Heroin Addicted Parent (BOOK REVIEW)

Heroin addiction has been stigmatized over the years. In this memoir, young Sara tells how her father’s addiction problem influenced every aspect of her life. Read more here about how she managed to find understanding and forgiveness… and take the best of her father’s addiction with her as she grew up.

4
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A Child’s Life Influenced by Addiction

Are you witness to the struggles and torment of an addicted parent? You are not alone! And while your life is not an easy one, there may yet be something you can take from a parent’s addiction.

Here, we’ll review the novel about the life of a young woman living with a heroin addicted father. This book offers hope that change is possible, and that you can survive and emerge from an addicted home a better person. More on how “The Fix” can help you here, with a section at the end for your questions.

The Childhood Trauma of Living With a Heroin Addicted Parent

“The Fix” opens with a descriptive tale.

Sara’s life beginning was not an easy one. It was certainly not like other children’s lives. Eight year old Sara is a Jewish American who lived in the post-war era. Her life changed tremendously as she uncovers her father’s heroin addiction. It was then – her earliest childhood days – that Sara faced the suffering that comes with living in a dysfunctional family.

This story gives a closer look at the way an innocent child and other family members were victimized by heroin addiction. An additional burden was the fact that heroin addiction carried a huge stigma at the 60’s. The author describes the hardships family members faced, and the lack of help or empathy in a time when addiction was viewed as a moral failing.

Each day of Sara’s growing up was accompanied by an emotional turmoil as her addicted father abused her mother and locked himself in the bathroom, shooting heroin. This drug took all the good memories Sara had of her father. What’s even worse, heroin inflicted deep emotional wounds on Sara. A little girl had to grew up far earlier than the other kids of her generation.

When Life Brings You Challenges, Transform Them

Sharon Leder shares her personal journey through the character of Sara, a young girl in a family devastated by heroin addiction. Her story gives us all the chance to develop a higher level of understanding and compassion for those who are caught up in the vicious circle of addiction. Looking upon this family experience of addiction, we learn that hard times demand:

  • strong faith
  • commitment
  • support

… from each member of the family system. When our loved ones are unable to see the truth, we need to help them find it. Or, we must face it alone. This remarkable book reminds us that even in the times of highest despair we mustn’t allow ourselves the comfort of being passive.

The problem of heroin addiction is not one we need to keep secret. It does not need to be a private matter to be whispered about in our homes. The problem of heroin addiction is a community problem that deserves a public voice.

Giving voice to her personal experience, Sharon Leder has made a big impact on all of us who face similar problems and care about their families and children. Our collective silence about the epidemic of addiction costs millions of lives every year. But – in the end – healing seems impossible if recovery does not serve a higher purpose.

So, if you’re facing addiction in your family, please reach out for help.

You are not alone.

You are not the cause of the problem.

You can get help.

Why “The Fix” Deserves a Place on Your Bookshelf

Denial, secrets, codependence, and complex family relationships are the key elements of this novel. They are the enemies which Sara’s pure and enthusiastic spirit had to overcome. However, you can move past an addicted parent! Like Sara, you can turn a nightmare into an experience that can at least uncover the “shame” communities have attached to the problem of addiction. Your voice is important and critical.

Sara’s story can inspire those that live, or have lived, the same fate as hers.

The value of this book is not only the addiction story itself, but it highlights the importance of recovery, acceptance and healing. The disease of addiction is like a cancer in the family, influencing the personality of each member. The wounds and scars of growing up in a home influenced by addiction should not be left untreated. Life struggles are not the ones that should make us weaker but quite the opposite.

You, too, can manifest strength and bravery.

Wondering where you can find “The Fix: A Father’s Secret A Daughter Search”? To buy, download and read the book, check this link: https://www.amazon.com/Fix-Fathers-Secrets-Daughters-Search/dp/0997722258

Additionally, if you are left with any questions about this book, we ask you to post them in the section below. We also welcome your feedback if you’ve read the book, and would like to comment and share your opinion or impressions.

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About the Author: Sharon Leder is an Associate Professor at Emerita SUNY-Nassau Community College. She taught English, Women’s Studies, and Jewish Studies on several campuses of the State University of New York before beginning the second half of her life as a fiction writer and poet. As a teacher, she wrote books and articles― on women writers, on literature of the Holocaust, and on women in academia― before turning to write poetry and fiction.
An earlier version of her novel The Fix: A Father’s Secrets, A Daughter’s Search was a finalist in Merrimack Media’s Outstanding Writer Award (2015). Several of Leder’s short works of fiction have either been anthologized or published online. As an adult in the ongoing process of recovery, she has been helped by twelve-step programs, non-profit groups that stress self-help and humility in the context of loving community. Leder resides on Cape Cod with her husband, artist and author Milton Teichman. Together they run The Teichman Art Gallery.
About the author
Lee Weber is a published author, medical writer, and woman in long-term recovery from addiction. Her latest book, The Definitive Guide to Addiction Interventions is set to reach university bookstores in early 2019.
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