Almost Lost
The True Story of an Anonymous Teenager's Life on the Streets
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Who in his right mind wants to talk to a shrink? I don't want to talk about anything. I don't want to feel anything, taste anything ... or anything. The lyrics "just dying to die" run around in my brain day and night...
Fifteen-year-old Sam is in pain. He comes to the therapist's office unwillingly, angry, depressed, and filled with guilt over his own self-destructive behavior. He is being drawn deeper and deeper into a black hole of despair from which he sees no way out.
The Road Back
This is the Real-life story of Sam's Recovery, told from tapes of his therapy sessions. It tells what drove him to leave home, how he survived on the street, and why he was desperate to escape from the brutality of the gang that had become his "family" and from the torment of his own self-loathing. For every teen who has experienced the pain and loneliness of a no-way-out darkness, and for all those who love them, here is the light that can lead the way back.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Presented as edited transcripts of taped counseling sessions Sparks (It Happened to Nancy) conducted with a 15-year-old patient, Sammy, this book pieces together a sobering story of a boy "almost lost" to depression. At his mother's insistence, the suicidal teenager begins talking to the perspicacious therapist, acknowledging that his inner pain is so deep that "sometimes even my hair hurts." Sammy can be almost astonishingly articulate as he gradually reveals the traumatic incidents from his past that have stripped away his self-esteem and self-respect. The caring therapist provides him with a variety of exercises, charts and "mind games" to help him get rid of the "fetid garbage" he is carrying around: his decision to join a gang in hopes of gaining a "family," experimentation with drugs and alcohol, experience as a victim of a drive-by shooting and his debilitating, unresolved bitterness toward his abusive estranged father. Though the transcripts shape a clearly defined portrait of an intelligent, determined teen, some of the patient-therapist conversations recorded here may seem lengthy and repetitious to the general YA reader. Yet for those coping with depression, Sparks's account provides inspiration, some rudimentary practical tools and a resounding endorsement of the potential benefits of therapy. Ages 12-up.
