Sex and Drugs

Just read a memoir called In My Skin by Kate Holden. It's the story of how a nice educated middle-class girl falls into heroin addiction and prostitution. I liked the fact that she wasn't pitying herself or blaming anyone else - she had a good stable loving family who never gave up on her. She describes very matter-of-factly how heroin gradually got a grip on her and inexorably messed up her life so much that she found herself streetwalking. She had chances to give up, she did occasionally give up, but the pull of addiction was too strong to resist. Interestingly, it was managing to get off the street and into better class brothels that ultimately empowered her and gave her the self confidence she needed to kick the drugs. She describes her work - all the sex with all the men - in unflinching detail, and some of it is horrible, as you'd expect. But she also acknowledges that there were some times that she enjoyed her work, even found great joy in it. This is a really well-told story. I avoid the rash of 'poor me' memoirs like the plague normally, but this was a different sort of tale.