Hard-bitten memoir of a young Englishman's abusive childhood and
quick descent into years of addiction and homelessness.Growing up
in a working-class household fraught with physical violence,
drunkenness and chaotic behavior, the author was brutalized by what
he beheld and wasted little time in indulging in more of the same.
Johnson describes a father sick with drink who couldn't touch his
children without hitting them and a mother whose fanatical
religious beliefs helped her ignore the fact that her husband beat
her and the kids while driving them into poverty. Johnson's broken
home life marked him as easy prey for sexual predators outside the
home, further shattering a skewed psyche. He was shoplifting and
drinking by the time he was eight, doing hard drugs not long after.
Adolescence and young adulthood were a whirl of increasingly
dangerous behavior, from loutish banging about with the lads, petty
thievery and short jail sentences to endless days of clubbing and
drugging in rave-addicted 1990s England. His chaotic youthful
behavior wasn't so different from that of many contemporaries, but
Johnson's disastrous upbringing left him unable to downshift into
adult society afterward. Nothing stopped the downward spiral - not
even the 1996 birth of his son, addicted just like both parents. In
the horrific final stretch before he cleaned up, Johnson was
homeless on the streets of London, addicted to a witches' brew of
drugs and seemingly unable to stop his plunge toward death. Clean
since July 2000, he is now a special advisor to Prince Charles.
Falls at times into the egotistical tone of the self-obsessed
addict, but for the most part Johnson's admirably direct prose
provides a straightforward, honest account of what happens to a
life when all the brakes come off. (Kirkus Reviews)
Mark Johnson's father had 'LOVE' tattooed across his left hand, but
that didn't stop the beatings. The Johnson children would turn up
to school with broken fingers and chipped teeth, but no one ever
thought of investigating their home life. Mark just slipped through
the cracks, and kept on falling. For years. Constantly in trouble
at school, Mark began stealing at the age of seven, was drinking by
the age of eight, and took his first hit of heroin aged eleven. A
sensitive, intelligent boy, he could never stay on the right path,
and though Art College beckoned, he ended up in Portland prison
instead. With searing honesty, WASTED documents Mark's descent into
the depths of addiction and criminality. Homeless, hooked on heroin
and crack, no one - least of all Mark - believed he would survive.
And yet - astonishingly - he somehow pulled himself through, and
now runs his own thriving tree surgery business, employing and
helping other recovering addicts. His story is at once shocking and
inspiring - a compelling account of his struggle to save himself,
and help save others in the process.
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