Surviving Alex

A Mother’s Story of Love, Loss, and Addiction

by Patricia A. Roos

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Pub Date May 17 2024 | Archive Date Aug 09 2024

Rutgers University Press

Biographies & Memoirs | Health, Mind & Body | Self-Help

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Description

In 2015, Patricia Roos’s twenty-five-year-old son Alex died of a heroin overdose. Turning her grief into action, Roos, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University, began to research the social factors and institutional failures that contributed to his death. Surviving Alex tells her moving story—and outlines the possibilities of a more compassionate and effective approach to addiction treatment.

Weaving together a personal narrative and a sociological perspective, Surviving Alex movingly describes how even children from “good families” fall prey to addiction, and recounts the hellish toll it takes on families. Drawing from interviews with Alex’s friends, family members, therapists, teachers, and police officers—as well as files from his stays in hospitals, rehab facilities, and jails—Roos paints a compelling portrait of a young man whose life veered between happiness, anxiety, success, and despair. And as she explores how a punitive system failed her son, she calls for a community of action that would improve care for substance users and reduce addiction, realigning public health policy to address the overdose crisis.

Advance Praise

“Patricia Roos’s harrowing story of her beloved son’s struggles with mental health and addiction—intertwined with her courageous but doomed fight to save his life—dishes out near relentless heartache. But she persists, revealing the systems that failed her family and inspiring us to join her fight for desperately needed reform.”

~Jessie Dunleavy, activist and author of Cover My Dreams in Ink: A Son's Unbearable Solitude, A Mother's Unending Quest

“An intensely personal and painfully honest story of the loss of a son, the cruelties of American drug and healthcare policies, and the hope that harm reduction can bring. Both a memorial and a sociological analysis, Surviving Alex shows us that addiction is indeed something to fear, but not for the reasons many of us assume.”

~David Herzberg, author of White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America

“Surviving Alex is a beautiful read – engaging, honest, thought-provoking, and relatable. This gripping personal story is contextualized with a thoughtful and clear-eyed characterization of the ravages of mental illness, addiction, and the drug pushers, and also offers a novel exploration of the therapeutic industry and criminal justice system.” ~Deborah Carr, author of Worried Sick: How Stress Hurts Us and How To Bounce Back

Available Editions

EDITION	Other Format
ISBN	9781978837027
PRICE	$26.95 (USD)
PAGES	402

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Additional Information

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Featured Reviews

Petra H, Reviewer

What can I say - that I enjoyed the read? No, not fitting. It‘s about a tragic. The loss of the son is tragical.
The mother = author does an amazing job by showing all motherly empathy and yet presenting facts and numbers: the issue is not only personal but a general.
Watched quite a few series about the opiod - caused mass addictions but here I got an ever bigger picture about addiction, mental health - a general issue for a society, not only some minor individuums „we“ want to overlook so easily - we can‘t do that anymore.
A good book - but no easy content.

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Devin W, Reviewer

I am so thankful I had the chance to read this title!! I have some personal experience with this topic and it was wonderful to see shared outlooks and to know this beautifully tragic story from the Author’s perspective. This story is eye opening and heartbreaking, but is a necessary topic of conversation for every mother out there. This was a wonderful read with lasting effects and much needed information.
Thanks again to #SurvivingAlex #NetGalley