The Trouble With Writing
About Addiction

When I first came up with the idea for Meeks, I was about 20 years old. I had a story in mind with what I thought was a pretty good hook and a strong pivot. I felt it was the sort of idea that sticks with you.

At the time, addiction wasn't really the point of the story. It was something that happened to the main character as a consequence of the events unfolding around him.

I also had some fairly strong suspicions about my own relationship with addiction, although I was nowhere near ready to deal with them.

Looking back, I could never have written Meeks when I was 20. I would have gotten so much wrong. In fact, I probably would have fallen into the very Hollywood traps I've come to dislike, with all the clichés and tidy explanations.

I needed another 30 years of living before I could write that story properly. I needed to let the idea marinate. Pardon the pun.

By the time I finally sat down to write Meeks, I'd been through my own struggles with addiction. I'd hit rock bottom and spent years rebuilding myself and my life through recovery.

Along the way, I'd also heard thousands upon thousands of other people's stories. Different people, all different backgrounds, but remarkably similar struggles.

Between my own experience and everything I'd learned from listening to others, I had what I would consider almost a PhD in the subject.

It gave me an understanding that I simply couldn't have had when I first conceived the story.

And I could write about it honestly.

One of my frustrations with the way addiction is portrayed in books, films and television is that it often gets packaged into something tidy and easily digestible. And most of it's lousy.

The darker aspects tend to be filled with clichés, and I think mostly included for shock value, to awaken that part of human nature that slows down at a roadside accident.

And then, more often than not, everything gets wrapped up with a tidy bow. There's the Hollywood happy ending, or the addict dies.

Either way, the story is finished.

The trouble is, addiction doesn't work that way.

It doesn't get wrapped up.

I have to wonder how many of these stories are written by people who have actually experienced addiction or alcoholism firsthand. And if they have, I think in a lot of cases they're hiding something. They don't want the story to be tied to them.

When I wrote Meeks, I wanted to avoid all that.

I wasn't interested in sermonizing. I didn't want to lecture readers about addiction, and I certainly didn't want to turn Ranleigh Meeks into some caricature of an alcoholic or an addict.

I wanted him to be a human being who was struggling.

I never judged Ranleigh. I allowed his story to unfold, and in many ways what happened was as much a surprise to him as it was to the reader.

I wasn't interested in explaining everything up front or passing judgment on his decisions.

There's also something of a trick in the way the story works.

Meeks is a psychological thriller. I wanted it to be a good, propulsive story, with twists and turns that would keep readers guessing.

As the story unfolds, readers follow Ranleigh's decisions. They might even agree with some of them. They might imagine themselves making exactly the same choices.

And then, somewhere along the way, addiction becomes part of the picture.

If you've been on Ranleigh's side up to that point, perhaps you're a little less inclined to judge him. Perhaps you can begin to understand how someone ends up in circumstances they never imagined for themselves.

That was something I hoped the novel might accomplish without having to explain it to the reader.

What I didn't expect was the response.

I've received reviews from people in recovery who have told me I got it right. Others have said the book changed some of their assumptions about addiction or made them look at a family member differently.

Those reviews mean the world to me.

I remember reading some of them and you could have knocked me over with a feather. I'd set out to write a psychological thriller, and somehow it had become something more than that.

More recently, I've made the decision to talk publicly about my own sobriety.

I could have kept that part of my life private. But I have some upcoming podcasts scheduled within the sober community, so I felt it was important to be honest about that and for readers to understand that my portrayal of addiction comes from a real place.

But there's a downside to that decision.

I sometimes worry that Meeks will be seen as a book about addiction, because I don't think that's really what it is.

Sure, addiction is part of the story. It's an important part. But it's not the whole story, and it wasn't what originally attracted me to the idea.

I wanted to write a psychological thriller. Something that would keep people turning the pages and keep them guessing.

So addiction aside, I still think it's a pretty good yarn.