| Title | : | Junkie Love |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 216 |
| Publication | : | First published March 13, 2013 |
Junkie Love Reviews
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Powerful book. Took me a couple of extra days to finish it, but it was one of those intense novels I needed to take a break from every now and then. Joe Clifford has a strong, honest voice. Although he wronged friends and loved ones and made so many poor decisions that made me want to scream, I couldn't help but root for him to improve his life and get better. This novel is a definite five stars. Loved every page of it.
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Kindle FREE today @ Amazon.
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Honest. That's the first word that pops in my mind when I think of this book. I loved it so much that I just read it for the second time this year. I was a heroin addict for a decade, so I tend to be interested in films or books that depict addiction. What made this book stand out, was its emotional honesty. It was a candid confessional, almost like a therapy session that you're listening in on. The way it bounced back and forth, from coast to coast, relationship to relationship, was all done with dizzying reccolection. I remember reading a quote once that said something like, "the best writers are the ones with the best memories." Joe Clifford has a memory to a fault, where he unabashedly shows us his warts and all. He doesn't care if you judge him for the grime, he's presenting his life without a filter. It's an amazing accomplishment and a terrific comeback story. I actually got emotional at the end of this book, and that's really saying something for someone as jaded as me. One of the best addiction memoirs of all time (Clifford says it can be taken as a memoir or novel in the foreword, trust me, no novel is capable of such honesty.)
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Love be a motherfucker. Uh huh. And there's no love that hurts worse than Junkie Love, which is the title of Joe Clifford's novel/memoir (you'll have to read Clifford's opening "Note From The Author" and decide which it is for yourself). But yeah, that twisted sickening shit every junkie does to try and keep (read: hold hostage, kidnap, bribe, or just submit to) the love of their lives – it's crazy, sad, improbable, and insane. Yet when you're in the middle of it you can't see any of that – only your warped senses of desire and need. Much like the physical addiction to heroin, using relationships have their own, if I may so boldly borrow from the 12 step literature, "incomprehensible demoralization". Which is to say, "that shit will fuck you up!" And not only does Clifford give a damn good depiction of this insanity, he exposes all the other crazy-ass thinking that goes on in a junkie's brain. The kind that led him to steal from his mom and family, leave a million rehabs, chase even crazier women, commit crimes, and almost die. Fuck yeah, Junkie Love!
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Joe writes, in his intro, about the fine line between truth and fiction. This is a work of fiction, but, like any good work of fiction, there is much more truth in it than the average reader suspects. And usually the small details are what are invented--the actual truth is in the terrible stuff...the emotional stuff...the stuff that makes the writer seem like the biggest asshole in the world. To write like this, you have to know yourself more than most people even dare to. I applaud Joe for sharing the things that most people would try to hide in the past, and for writing about them so damn well. His writing is unapologetic, he doesn't dumb it down or soften it up, and it stings. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing.
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This was a very well-written memoir about the horror of addiction. Joe was pretty much addicted to every drug there is, as well as addicted to women. His wife, Cathy, was a mentally disturbed woman, often hospitalized for bouts of 'madness' yet he remained married to her and introduced her to his junkie lifestyle. Marriage did not stop Joe from falling for other women, though. He moves frm New England to San Fransisco after reading Jack Kerouac's books while on a train in Europe and deciding that SF is the city for him. He spends ten years living in crackhouses, sheds, trailers, shelters, hospitals, rehabs and jail. He suffers from infections, skin diseases, and almost has a hand amputated after shooting 'bad speed' into a vein on his right hand. This is not a pretty or glamorous tale, but the writing is great- often entire scenes (mostly describing the city) read like long stretches of lyrical poetry. If you are looking for a no-holds-barred book on addiction, look no farther. --Jen from Quebec :0)
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Joe Clifford, you're a talented bastard. This was quite simply just a fantastic read from cover to cover. I've read so many "drug novels" that I had become slightly numb to them, but this one snapped me out of that. It's gritty, authentic, and has plenty of heart. Great work.
I'm immediately moving on to "Lamentation." -
Junkie Love portrays the author’s existence as a drug addict.
This is one hell of a book. It reminds me of another I reviewed, Just Like That by Les Edgerton. The subject matter is entirely different, the parallel lies in the incredible honesty that both authors apply in their work. In Junkie Love the author charts his decline from light drug user to utterly messed up waste of space and then recovery. I truly struggle to understand how Clifford actually survived.
The writing style is interesting and unusual, a mix of past tense flashback chapters in the past tense interspersed with others in present tense. It’s unfair to say the narrative is confusing, the thread does move about, but it conveys the mental state of a junkie. We’re not talking lucid here, memories are jumbled for the straightest of people, never mind those who spend most of their times either high or hunting down their next fix.
The author is incredibly blunt about the life he led, the places (dumps really) he lived (like Hepatitis Heights) and the things he did to survive. I doubt 99% of the population would never experience anything like the events in Junkie Love. Here’s an example:
I didn’t last long. Like every other job I’ve ever had, I was fired from this one, too. As the summer nights grew shorter, my heroin problem grew worse, and a quarter gram of speed just wasn’t enough to drag me from the other side of town fast enough, especially if I was chasing down smack. Heroin first, speed second, cocaine third and then the other stuff like food and shelter. That was my hierarchy of needs.
Then there are the supporting characters. Minor ones with nicknames (e.g. Gluehead) come and go but there are a handful of constants – the author’s wife, Catherine, who has serious mental health issues and is dealt with in the past tense chapters, Amy a junkie girlfriend in the present tense and his family who are in both. Ultimately almost all these relationships fade, only the author’s family is there at the end (remarkable given what he put them through).
Here’s an example of the writing, and one of the characters:
Oksana was boiling cat heads in a big pot on the stove when I got back to the apartment. Oksana collected road kill, cooking off the fur and using the bleached bits of skull as jewelry. A homeless, teenaged speed dealer, she’d race the midnight streets of San Francisco on her skateboard, a demon pixie draped in shiny beads and necklaces delivering product, two giant guard dogs snapping at her side like the Hounds of Hell.
Brilliant, but shocking stuff.
**Originally reviewed for Books and Pals blog. May have receive free review copy.** -
There's a lot I want to compliment the author regarding this book, but I don't know where to start. It's one of those books that leaves you mulling over what you just read as the ending seems to arrive too soon. As a reader, you want to stick around; you want to see where the author goes from here. He's bared so much of his soul to you, sparing none of the visceral, gritty details, that you feel a kinship - a friendship formed. In a way, I felt like Dr. Stevens at the end of this book (he's a character near the latter parts), watching from a distance the journey of a heroin addict as he struggles and fights his way to sobriety.
As a memoir, this is an undoubtedly amazing one. The prose is solid, and there's an inherent beauty to it too. It's like watching a single, solitary snowflake glide down from the sky up close as some sort of devastating mushroom cloud erupts in the background. Beauty in a dark world teeming with disease and shady characters.
The author, as I mentioned, spares no details. He's upfront and honest. He tells us the things we're itching to know, and he tells us the things we'd shy away from - the hard, cold realities of what addiction can do to an individual. We get both the fantasy and the sludge at the bottom of the gutter. It's this combination of beautiful prose and blunt honesty that reels the readers in. We trek through this muck, sometimes unwillingly, with him, hoping (praying) that there's a lit torch at the end of this dark voyage, that everything will be okay.
This book really resonates with the reader on a deeply personal level. That said, I feel this is a must read, and it'll stick with you. I know I won't forget it. -
My friend Rob P. introduced me to Joe Clifford on Facebook which is how I heard of this book. I was afraid that I might not like it, and then that would be really uncomfortable since I've now had a few conversations with Mr. Clifford. After the introduction though, I was hooked and there was no doubt that I knew I would love the book. From page one, his description of the hell he was living through made it so that I felt I was walking the streets and hanging around with the people he spoke of. It was like my mind made a movie for the book and every scene in my mind is very vivid. If I were a filmmaker, I'd be good at directing this fictional film in my head. Though there is a part where he says he's basically not fond of women like me (former or current housewife addicts), it didn't discourage me from loving the book. When I started the book Joe had joked with me that he lives in the end after I had said that the previous book I had read was so intense. Joe may have been a true junkie, but he clearly is a brilliant man with the ability to write a book that easily draws the reader in for a wild ride. Thankfully, I don't have to worry anymore that I wouldn't love the book because I honestly did and it now has a place on my bookshelf to hand down to my daughters when they are older. Thanks Rob for introducing me to Joe and thank you Joe for letting me have a peek into the deepest depths of your life and thoughts.
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JUNKIE LOVE will be a book that will stick with me forever. I read a book, when I was much younger, called GO ASK ALICE. I never forgot that book, until I read Clifford's book. This book cuts deep because we all have that romantic interest in living Kerouac's life and living for the moment. JUNKIE LOVE does not glamorize life on the street and looking for that next fix. Honestly, it gripped my heart and would not let go. Do not get me wrong, Clifford can write and keep you mesmerized with his words and story. The story...God, the story was so good. (I hate using a simple word like 'good')
He starts out thinking he just wants to live the *artist life* and it gets out of control with the drugs, sex, disease, and crime. It built up to a climax that had me wanting to grab him and scream it was not worth it. Just get off that freaking merry-go-round. Yes, it was easy to sit in my chair and frantically turn the pages to see what would happen and if he would survive this crazy life.
My only complaint is why I did not read this book sooner. -
From the east coast to the west coast.
I was immediately drawn to this this memoir as the author Joe was raised in Connecticut. Connecticut, being the place I was born and raised, I'd know the places he talks of in this. He keeps everything raw and shares with us readers all of his downs. It was fascinating to me how he'd go from Connecticut to California and then rinse and repeat the process. This memoir had all of the stories about how his addiction became and continued to thrive. So, for me, it was a good read as this is the type of stuff I gravitate towards. I will say times jumped a lot. It wasn't all told in order the stuff happened. But he makes us aware of the time frame changing. Joe has an amazing way of how he describes things. I read after that he is now living a clean and happy life. He also has written more books in the thriller genre. I may have to check then out.
"If the seed of Cathy’s sickness had already been planted, I was the shit in the fertilizer that made it grow." -Joe Clifford -
It was hard to put this book down once I started. I also couldn’t stop thinking about it after I finished. It’s a gut-wrenching look at the life of a heroin addict and the writer doesn’t try to cloak it in some kind of romantic bullshit. It’s raw, achingly sad, and brave. The story jumps around in time but it’s not confusing or disjointed in any way. The writing is both gritty and unforgettably lyrical and I felt transported to 1990s San Francisco, like I was right there in the seedy shooting gallery called Hepatitis Heights. His relationships with Cathy and Amy were heart-breaking, comical, and explosive. I could feel the insane animal-like intensity with each of the women. This book takes us on a hellish journey of what it’s like to be an addict but there is a powerful beautiful truth here that cuts through all the ugliness: humans will always crave love and a connection to one another even in their darkest days.
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I'd feel less guilty for liking this book so much were it not true. Two sittings were all it took, pages humming by. Some passages are matter-of-fact, while others are more fanciful literary flights (I'll let you guess which are about scrapping for dope versus shooting it). It's an apt title, as Clifford often equates or conflates his heroin highs with those of female affections any given week. Some protagonists frustrate me with their endless failings to do the right thing until it's too late in the story, but I had no such issue here, knowing that junkies never really kick, tempering my expectations and leaving them open for anything to happen. Junkie Love will surprise you both in its depths and heights of human behavior. Repeatedly.
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I started this book around 8 in the evening...and was very much tempted to push through until 2 or 3 A.M. and finish it in one sitting. That's how compelling I found Joe Clifford's story. You can enjoy it on many levels: there's the horror of his former life, an unsparing chronicle of descent and collateral damage. There's the bizarre strain of horror-comedy that's woven into the best of these stories -- I thought of Jerry Stahl's "Permanent Midnight" (which Clifford has acknowledged as a favorite). There's a kind of gutter poetry here too. And finally there's the redemption: Joe Clifford has beaten the long odds against recovery and established himself as a writer and editor who brings enjoyment to many readers through his work.
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It's been a long time since I finished a book in less than twenty-four hours, but once I started JUNKIE LOVE I couldn't stop reading it. It's compelling and heartbreaking, and sometimes horrifyingly funny, but ultimately, it's hopeful. Clifford is a masterful writer, adept at using precisely the right words to immerse you in a world so vivid it has you cringing every time he searches for a vein.
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In a single, potentially inappropriate word; beautiful.
Clifford's talent here is bringing you to ground level with the narrator, and while life experience certainly accounts, it still takes an extreme talent to transport a reader and captivate while said reader would rather turn away.
I honestly can't find better words for this. Buy this book. Read it. Share it with others. -
Love for two women, one a junkie and the other a paranoid schizophrenic, competes with self-loathing and longing for the high. Parts road novel, an homage to the beats in Desolation Angels and a grunge lullaby. Motels and grocery stores, bridges and alleys, it's not pretty but looking for a good vein and dirty sex has a poetic lure.
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Reading Junkie Love makes you feel like you're rubbernecking a multi car accident on the highway. Then you're in a bathtub filled with water and someone is holding you down by your neck. They finally let go and you spring up. You can breathe. And the air is great.y
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Absolutely riveting. Highly recommending this to everyone!
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Beautifully written, raw account of the horrific life led by junkies everywhere.
As hard as this book was to read; I found it's compelling writing made it even hard to put down! -
Junkie Love
Joe Clifford
Note: If you have the chance read the second edition published in September of 2018.
Clifford’s memoir Junkie Love is a gritty raw no holds barred look at his journey through addiction. Beginning in his early twenties where following his dreams of art and music led him to San Francisco where began his junket to addiction and ended when at his lowest point after being a homeless junkie he attempted suicide before reaching to find what he needed to make a new start.
The dialogue is as raw as the story as he unapologetically recounts the highs and lows the madness, the people the places and the thieving and scamming that identified more than ten years of his life. He also gives readers a look at his dysfunctional home life, how his younger brother suffered his own demons, how his mother even through a debilitating disease came to his rescue time after time and, how he suffers survivor’s guilt about the one’s who didn’t make it and how it was education that gave him the power he needed to overcome.
The read is not for the faint hearted it’s not for someone who doesn’t want the nitty gritty version but wants the TV reality show kinder gentler rendering of an addict’s tale. It should be mandatory reading for every high school freshman.
Joe Clifford is the author of several books both non-fiction and fiction, the first book in his Jay Porter series, Lamentation won an Anthony nomination for best novel of 2015 (Oceanview Publishing) it’s a series about two estranged brothers and is based on the complicated relationship between he and his brother. His upcoming release, The One That Got Away (Down and Out Books) will release December 3rd. -
Junkie Love
Joe Clifford
Note: If you have the chance read the second edition published in September of 2018.
Clifford’s memoir Junkie Love is a gritty raw no holds barred look at his journey through addiction. Beginning in his early twenties where following his dreams of art and music led him to San Francisco where began his junket to addiction and ended when at his lowest point after being a homeless junkie he attempted suicide before reaching to find what he needed to make a new start.
The dialogue is as raw as the story as he unapologetically recounts the highs and lows the madness, the people the places and the thieving and scamming that identified more than ten years of his life. He also gives readers a look at his dysfunctional home life, how his younger brother suffered his own demons, how his mother even through a debilitating disease came to his rescue time after time and, how he suffers survivor’s guilt about the one’s who didn’t make it and how it was education that gave him the power he needed to overcome.
The read is not for the faint hearted it’s not for someone who doesn’t want the nitty gritty version but wants the TV reality show kinder gentler rendering of an addict’s tale. It should be mandatory reading for every high school freshman.
Joe Clifford is the author of several books both non-fiction and fiction, the first book in his Jay Porter series, Lamentation won an Anthony nomination for best novel of 2015 (Oceanview Publishing) it’s a series about two estranged brothers and is based on the complicated relationship between he and his brother. His upcoming release, The One That Got Away (Down and Out Books) will release December 3rd. -
Sex drugs and rock and roll
Not for the thin- skinned, Joe Clifford’s journey through addiction is a hard slog, beautifully written. His descent to the bottom is filled with brutal details, as is his crawl back out. Honest to a fault, his skill as a writer threatens to become a habit for the reader. -
Point Blank Podcast Featured Review (pointblankpodcast.com)
Junkie Love was originally published by Battered Suitcase in 2013, and a new edition was recently released.
This book is billed as a hardboiled novel, but it’s really an autobiography. As Tim O’Brien wrote, “That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.”
It is set in San Francisco in the late 1990s and early aughts, and like the SF in Hammett’s novels, Junkie Love captures a time and a place that no longer exists.
And while the city is central to the story, this is a story about a character — let’s call him Joe — who comes West from CT to the city on the bay with rock and roll fantasies, and romantic notions of meth and heroin use.
This is a story about a character who falls hard for speed and narcotics and nearly dies—more than once—trying to keep it together—to make it to the other side.
And this is also a story about redemption. Most people do not escape the web of addiction. This character did. But it was not easy and we see the struggles in all their gritty detail as the character — let’s call him Joe — cheats and steals and lies and fucks his way from one high to the next, conning banks out of dough, hawking his friend’s guitars, bilking his mother, and when things are at their most dire—injecting mice shit into his blood stream in the hope that it is black tar heroin. People don’t usually survive these circumstances. And people who used IVs in SF in the late 1990s the way our narrator did usually do not escape without HIV.
But like I said this is a story of redemption. Nothing is glorified. We see Joe’s illusions get swept away one by one until — emaciated, scabby, and alone -- he tries to suicide via heroin injection. But it doesn’t work. And because it doesn’t work, we have this book — a story about love and desire, dreams and redemption, about a suburban American kid with romantic delusions taking big risks and nearly dying because of them.
The narrator doesn’t get fixed without difficulty. Over the course of his addiction, he checks into rehab facilities 17 times before scraping the barrel and committing for the long haul.
This is a novel in fragments. The chronology is broken up, in part because drugs eat at the memory like moths eat cloth, but also, I think the reasoning was to maintain a propulsive narrative.
The book starts with a DEA raid on a house in SF called Hepatitis Heights. This sets the story off and shows what is at stake. But the main character’s story starts earlier, with his arrival to SF a decade early. He had a job, played in a band, got into speed. Did more speed. Got with a girl who did speed. Got married. And then he meet a guy who sold heroin.
Most of the novel is set in SF, but there is also a road-trip, lots of sex, and several stints in CT, including the final act when he hits rock bottom.
I think this is a great memoir — I mean, novel — one that pulls no punches. Clifford does well not to glamorize the life he escaped. He is careful not to turn this into a romance or nostalgia trip, even if there are moments when I’m like — this life seems like fun.
Overall — for a first book — he had published a collection of short stories — this is a very impressive read and a serious contribution to the canon of addition-themed memoirs / novels. And though this is not noir (the main character is redeemed) the writing is seriously hardboiled and some of the scenes are gritty as hell. -
"There is no junkie chic. This is not SoHo, and you are not Sid Vicious. You are not a drugstore cowboy, and you are not spotting trains. You are not a part of anything— no underground sect, no counter-culture movement, no music scene, nothing. You have just been released from jail and are walking down Mission Street, alternating between taking a hit off a cigarette and puking, looking for coins on the ground so you can catch a bus as you shit yourself."
This is the kind of read that haunts you long after you finish reading it. The narrative is unforgiving in its intimacy—both visceral and emotional—and pulls you on a hellish ride into the world of hardcore heroin abuse. Clifford never pushes too far into pathos or self-deprecation, but it's clear that although he carries regret for what he has done to his life and using those who were within range of his self-destruction, he reports events sometimes with blunt force trauma, sometimes with dental precision. Always, Clifford crafts the gruesome existence into a thing of beauty. His prose is stellar, often poetic. Insomnia-inducing—I didn't want to stop reading, which is rare.
Two summers ago, I read Selby's 'Requiem For A Dream'—it was light fare and juvenile in comparison to Junkie Love.
