iago-go's Reviews > Candy

I've read many books that feature the struggles of drug addiction before but none of them have hit as hard as this one. I think addiction is one of those things that is hard to understand from the outside, but this book really opened my eyes as to how heroin becomes your No. 1 concern in every single moment of your life. When you take a hit, you are planning for the next one. When you want to quit, you take a hit to celebrate. The desperation of detoxing and the knowledge that you're throwing your life to shit is only eased by another shot.
There are a lot of very tough moments throughout the novel, and I couldn't keep my eyes off it. When I wasn't reading, I kept thinking of the slow-motion train-wreck that it all is. Heroin is not romanticized, and when the narrator does romanticize it, you see the irony in it. The effects of withdrawal are treated in detail, and not glossed over as in other books. It shows you the real painful reality of being dependent on something you can't control, while making for an extremely compelling and entertaining story.