Memoirs Aren't Fairytales - A Story of Addiction

“I could make up a story to cover the last eight years, but the scars on my arms told the truth. So did my ankles, the skin between my toes, even the veins that had burst on my breasts. Did my battle wounds really prove I was a survivor? Or was I too damaged to be glued back together?”

Nicole had only one skyline to remind her of the freedom she’d lost—a tattoo of inked buildings dotting the skies of Boston, crisscrossed by scars. Heroin had owned her, replaced everyone and everything she’d once loved. The past was supposed to be behind her. It wasn’t, but that was the price of addiction.

Two men love her; one fills a void, and the other gives her hope of a future. Will love find a way to help her sing a lullaby to addiction, or will her scars be her final good-bye?

The remarkable No 1 bestselling memoir that everyone’s talking about:

“An inspiration” Alison O’Reilly, Sky News

“100% worthwhile” Belfast Telegraph

“makes us realise how lucky we are” Amanda Brunker

“This is an incredible story, told completely straight — no sensationalism, no self-pity and plenty of wicked humour thrown in. Gripping, extraordinary and so shocking you have to keep reminding yourself that this really happens — this is one all teenagers and parents should read. Hell, it should be on the school curriculum”, Evening Echo

In her early twenties, Rachael Keogh was a desperate heroin addict. Her addiction to the drug took her to a place about as low as a person can go. She stole and turned to prostitution to help her feed her habit. Rachel had grown up in Ballymun and had, like many others, succumbed to the lure of drugs during her teenage years. This is Rachael Keogh’s own story written in her own words. She is now thirty, a student of psychotherapy, an attractive and optimistic young woman. Her story is a remarkable account of recovery from the very edge of personal destruction. It is a heart-lifting story of human redemption.

Rachael Keogh is a thirty year old Dubliner, the mother of a baby boy, and a student.

So begins Patrick Moores unforgettable account of life as a crystal meth addicta tweaker. Like a wild ride down Alices rabbit hole with a guide who is darkly funny and heartbreakingly honest, Tweaked chronicles a twenty-year trip that stretches from Moores lonely childhood in Iowa with his grandmother, Zelmaan alcoholic artist who, when loaded, turns frozen food into crafts projects to the day he sits, naked, in a Los Angeles rental, hallucinating about psycho-robbers while talking to a possum hes sure is God. Along the way, there are acid trips at the V.F.W., Dexetrim study halls with his Bad Girl Posse in the seventies, teeth-grinding nights of dancing and anonymous sex in New York Citys hottest eighties clubs, taking pictures of Andy Warhol, losing friends and lovers, and navigating a Byzantine underworld of cookers, users, club kids, dealers, and colorful characters as intense as the drug itself. There is Lee, the glamorous, outré bad boy with a devastating wit and a taste for danger; Tony, the tweaker who likes to remove his eyebrows; Ding-Dong, the Depends-wearing, nearly blind housemate; Hisako, the artist and squatter with an impenetrable Japanese accent and a fondness for hot plate cooking; Mother Judy, the tough, butch rehab counselor who takes no prisoners, and countless others on the road from crystal meth hell to eventual sobriety.

This is a true story of drug addition. If you are unaware of what can happen to a young person whose life was destroyed by becoming a drug addict, I hope you will read Susan’s life story. This book has great input from the addict, my daughter, on when she started, on how she started, and why she started using drugs. Her letters are insightful as are her confessions, never before told. If I can help even one child avoid the life my daughter has led, it will be worth the agony I have spent in reliving Susan’s life which has been destroyed by the use of drugs.