LIQUID LOVER: A Memoir of Addiction, Recovery, and Hope

The unforgiving yet ultimately liberating cycle of recovery from addiction—of desperate attraction and triumphant avoidance—is captured in freelance writer Moriarty's unsparing memoir. Writing with the passion and immediacy of a man who knows he might not have lived to tell his tale, the author, now in his mid-40s and living in Kansas City, Mo., conjures with accelerating vividness a long downward spiral. Over the years, drink, drugs and equally desperate and numbing gay male sex—usually unprotected, occasionally anonymous, often lost to an alcoholic blackout—take him to the edge of death itself. As with the recovery process, the sometimes exhausting pile-on of repetitious prose demands endurance. Particularly jarring, at first, are such authorial tics as the constant use of the too-cute phrases "Vitamin V" and "drinking daze." But readers who persevere past the first 75 pages or so will fall into the intense, present-tense rhythm of Moriarty's distinctive voice and tune into his compelling mantra of recovery, in which buzzwords and bromides become lifelines and affirmations. The reward for sticking with this book is the unveiling of a man remarkably devoid of self-pity and relentlessly honest in his self-criticism. Its appeal is most directly to the gay community, where alcohol and drug abuse have long gone hand in hand with issues of self-esteem and self-acceptance, but Moriarty's account shimmers with universal truth. Others in recovery, or in need of it, may well see their reflection in the mirror Moriarty holds up to his own life. (July)