| Meredith Maran’s Dirty: A Search For Answers Inside America’s Teenage Drug Epidemic is a moving study of America’s failure to address teen drug use. The book, which grew out of the author’s struggles with her own son’s addiction, throughout harmonizes a general analysis of America’s War on Drugs and drug treatment programs with a close study of three particular teens. Zalika, Mike, and Tristan offer no happy endings. For Tristan, a boy from a well-to-do family, even the loving treatment of Phoenix Academy cannot lead to a life free from chemical dependency. The prison-like therapeutic community of Center Point, meanwhile, seems only to drive Mike and his fellow addicts further into deception and isolation. A prostitute and sometimes addict, sixteen-year-old Zalika is eventually abandoned by her family and the drug court system as she watches her closest friends die around her. Though the book offers horrifying statistics regarding the rise of teen drug use, Dirty’s stories of Zalika, Tristan, and Mike are the most effective exposition of America’s failure to serve its most needy citizens. With Tristan, Maran takes the controversial stand that some limited drug use may actually be helpful in the process of self-discovery. Through Mike, readers see the failure of the adult AA model for teens who are not ready to embrace change. With Zalika Maran observes that a diagnosis of drug addiction is often only a "partial diagnosis"--a means to get a troubled teen into treatment that inevitably ignores a host of family, socio-economic, and educational problems. Threaded throughout remains Maran’s personal longing to understand why and how her own son could have fallen prey to drugs…and how he was lucky enough to return sober. --Patrick O’Kelley |
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 Flawed or not, provides real insight into teen drug use |
| Review Date: August 22, 2005 |
| Reviewer: Gwyneth Calvetti, West Salem, WI United States |
I read this book from a similar point of view as that of Maran--as the mother of a teen pulled into this vortex. According to every single checklist out there on "parenting to prevent drug use," my husband and I pass with flying colors. So what happened? That was my motivation for picking up this book.
I disagree with her statement that the drug use of my generation was somehow more "rational," given the threat of Vietnam duty and such. This generation has equally "rational" reasons for tuning out--the possibility of the draft, bleak job outlooks and any number of other valid concerns. I had trouble with the book until I moved beyond that premise and accepted the points her unconventional approach uncovered.
Flawed or not, she followed real kids struggling with real problems, which makes for compelling reading. She intersperses their stories with an assessment of the problem and the various solutions. I am inclined to agree with her final assessment as to the real causes for the current crisis, and am hopeful that flawed or not, the right eyes have read her book and might work for change. Following the stories of the three kids she befriended takes us into the worlds of these individuals, and for that, the book is worth the time spent to read it. She suggests changes in public policy with which I agree, but gives little to individual families trying to sort out and address similar problems given the state of affairs today. If you're hoping to find answers for your own particular situation, you won't find that, but you will gain insight into the mindset of many kids today that leads to taking such risks with their future. |
Honest but flawed
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| Review Date: January 24, 2005 |
| Reviewer: A reader, Salinas, CA |
Read this book, but take the author's theories with a grain of salt. The accounts of the teens' experiences are well worth reading, and the author makes some trenchant observations as well. She usefully distinguishes between drug use and drug abuse, which far too few commentators do. However, she relies on too few and too biased sources for information about the "teen drug epidemic" and about the course of addiction.
Another concern I had about the book was that the subject she chose to follow through drug court appeared not to be an addict. Although this subject had serious problems (she ran away from home and worked as a prostitute, beginning at age 12) and both used and sold drugs, based on what is reported in the book she was not the kind of compulsive user who really qualifies as an addict. Although her story is interesting, it does not offer a fair evaluation of drug court programs. This subject was put in drug court as a last resort, not because it offered her the kinds of help she really needed.
More troubling, some of Maran's thoughts about teen addiction are not borne out by the evidence in her own book (let alone the other data available). At several points in the book, she questions whether teenagers can really be "addicts," and/or whether it is useful to teach kids with drug problems that addiction is something they will have to deal with for their entire lives. While she makes a good point that "forever" is a difficult concept for kids to grasp, that fact does not justify sugarcoating the truth. Kids need adults to tell them the unvarnished truth, even when the truth is painful. Just as responsible adults would tell children with diabetes that, although we may hope for a cure, realistically it is likely they will have to deal with diabetes as long as they live, we should tell young drug addicts the same thing. (Not all users are addicts, but that does not mean addiction never occurs.)
Maran's discomfort with the "addict" label and her subject in general seems to be messily bound up with her son's drug abuse, her own recreational use as a teenager, and the stigma associated with addiction. She appears guilty and defensive about her permissive parenting, even though the stories in the book teach us that authoritarian parents can also have kids who abuse drugs. She wants to believe that the teens she profiled may "age out" of their drug use, just as many young recreational drug users do, even when the kids' own stories suggest intervention is essential.
She wants to believe that since she used drugs as a teen (and may still as an adult, although that is unclear) and experienced no untoward consequences, everyone else should be able to do the same. Unfortunately, life is not fair. Though most people who experiment with drugs will experience no significant problems as a result, about 10% will abuse drugs or become addicted to an extent that drug use interferes with their ability to fulfill obligations, maintain relationships, achieve goals, stay out of the justice system, and the like. Wishing it were otherwise will not make it so.
Maran's thinking also appears clouded by the stigma of immorality associated with addiction. Parents, teens, addicts of all ages, and society at large would be well-served to reject this stigma at every opportunity. Even though addiction may seem to originate in "voluntary" behavior (the initial experimentation with drugs), virtually no one sets out to be an addict, and no one is served by the moral opprobrium associated with addiction. Perhaps if the moral connotations could be stripped away, Maran would be more comfortable with the "addict" label. If not, she could refer to the problem as "abuse," but it is unconscionable to let readers believe that, with time, the abuse/addiction may magically go away on its own. |
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