FROM A DARK PLACE

'How A Family Coped With Drug Addiction' is the sub-title of our dear friend the famous cartoonist Tony Husband's second book, a companion to Take Care, Son code 92287. This time Tony turns his attention to his own son Paul, struggling with drug addiction, and how it can be handled with incredible gentleness, grace and honesty. The father and son team simply tell it how it is and Tony's fine drawings are of himself and Paul who thankfully is clean today and has two beautiful daughters, the youngest of whom Daisy is a fine illustrator already under her grandfather's tutelage. The bright, happy, carefree little boy excelled in sport, loved music, but his spirit and confidence were broken when the bullying at school began. Then he started drinking and messing with drugs, needing somewhere to hide. Depression, self-harming, drink, drugs - by 21 Paul was using heroin. Stealing and borrowing money from his family, his room was a tip and Paul sunk to smoking heroin in a public toilet and never got his stuff back out of the pawn shop. After a police caution, prescriptions, he was then injecting crack, flirting with death and he knew it. He finally asked his Dad for help and in rehabilitation knew he was ravaged, destroyed with fear and guilt; detox was hard and every joint screamed in pain. Nine months later and out, he slipped back into his old ways and OD'd: 'The LUF group were amazing. I felt I was part of a movement. No one judged me because they were all in the same boat. Their love and energy was infectious.' Today Paul is a successful photographer. Another uplifting and helpful book from dear Tony with his poignant cartoon colour illustrations throughout. 60 pages, softback, ALL COPIES SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR AND HIS SON, PAUL.