I Romanced the Stone:
memoirs of a recovering hippie
Marvin D. Wilson
Reviewed by Ashley Merrill
I
Romanced the Stone is a real life account of the authors’ battle
with crack
cocaine. He was a hippie in his young
adult life, and then becomes a successful business man with a wife and
a family
in the early 1990’s. As time went on,
and Marvin earned more and more money he finds himself spending more
than he is
making. Because of his habits, his wife asks for a separation. Marvin takes this hard and finds a
girlfriend. His girlfriend is a hooker that he meets.
This is where things really start to take a
turn for the worse. He lies to his family about who he’s with, and he
starts to
realize that his girlfriend is smoking crack cocaine. He made her
promise that
she would not be into drugs in order to be with him, but instead of
staying
true to his word he decides to try the crack cocaine. And so the story
continues.
Marvin tries the crack again and
again and before he knows it he is spending 100$ a day just to get the
high he
needs to be able to function. He lies to his wife, his kids, and
everyone else
about his habit and sells almost everything in his home just to get
high. He risks his life going into the
ghetto to get
the crack from his dealer and eventually is so focused on getting high
all the
time that he stops seeing his girlfriend and basically stops most
communication
with his family.
The story continues on with Marvin
finally getting the treatment that he needs, but in a way that you
would not
expect. I am not going to give away the ending, but it is definitely
worth
reading! I thought that this book would be just like most addiction
books I
have read, but it was surprisingly different in so many ways! First of
all,
Marvin does not leave very much to the imagination. He tells it to you
straight
and doesn’t water anything down. I think he is going for shock value
here. The end of the story has the
perspective of
his counselor/sister in law and how she felt when she met him and the
struggle
she went through when trying to help him. Getting more than just his
perspective was very insightful. And
third, his use of humor when it is appropriate is very much appreciated. I think Marvin realizes that this is a heavy
book that is meant to bring out lots of deep emotion, so he tries to
help ease
the mode and let in some positive light.
All in all this was a great book to
read, with a different ending than one would have thought.
I would recommend this book to anyone, but
especially those who are at the vulnerable age who may think that one
drag from
a crack pipe won’t do any harm…