The Last Stop by Patricia Street is a non-fiction memoir in which the author details the heart-breaking addiction cycle of her son David, and her experience as a mother in the eye of its storm. The book begins with a backstory from Street on the family, their dynamics, and a brief overview of what David was like “before” and how the progression of drug use escalated to where it could no longer be denied. Street and her ex-husband, a former police officer and David's father, are forced to make difficult decisions. David's addiction continues to spiral out of control, in and out of rehab, courtrooms, jail, treatment, relationships, and work. Interspersed are journal entries, letters, poems, and essays written by David. “As the mother of an addict, I had become accustomed to being treated with suspicion that there surely must be something wrong with me to produce a drug-addled son.”

The first thing that intrigued me about The Last Stop is the fact that it is not a guide. Patricia Street makes this clear right off the bat and instead gives a no-holds-barred account of her story, which is also David's story, although David is actually given the chance to speak for himself in the pieces that bear his signature. There is a raw, profound honesty to Street's writing and she touches on some of the actions of an addict that only someone who has a loved one will know, such as him admittedly juggling multiple women. Meanwhile, his wife Circe is in a constant state of enabling and David becomes more delusional, genuinely believing “I am better off alone than to be continuously persecuted.” Street's story is compelling enough to take us into the deepest, darkest depths of addiction. Recommended.

The Last Stop is a book that no parent would ever want to write. Patricia Street shares the unimaginable realities of parenting a beloved son who has a soul-crushing, body-battering, mind-destroying heroin addiction. The voice and tone Street uses when letting us into her life is not tempered or sugar-coated by any stretch of the imagination and readers are given a coarse tour of uncomfortable truths and crushing emotional weight. What do you do when your child cannot be trusted to even sleep under the same roof? When he breaks in, steals, lies, and then finally commits to recovery, only to do the same again? And again. And again. The timeline of the book is non-linear and Street's retelling is punctuated by David's writing in many forms, with Street accomplishing a dream for her son by publishing The Last Stop.

There is no easy way to trust the general population with our personal struggles because they almost always let us down, and as I read through The Last Stop it was Patricia Street's bravery that sat in the forefront for me. For a reader, that trust has to be present, also because so many memoirs written on the topic of addiction, and especially when their loved one did not survive the disease, tell their story with kid gloves. As if the memory of who that person became is outweighed by how that person started out, instead of accepting that they were both, in equal parts. Street is a gifted writer and a powerful first-person narrator. Her son David was the same, so far as we can tell from what has been published in Street's book. The next reader will have to formulate their own opinion on The Last Stop but mine is firm: this is a must-read.

Patricia Street's The Last Stop details the heartbreaking experience of a mother who lost her son to addiction and his exploration of writing and philosophy. After years of drug abuse, David passed away at the age of 39 due to complications that arose from opioid addiction. In addition to narrating her own experiences as she dealt with David's addiction, Patricia Street takes us through her son's abuse of drugs from his own viewpoint by employing a collection of David’s writings—including letters, messages, poems, stories, and essays—and the conversations he had with her and others. The Last Stop includes several lessons for mothers, friends, and families of people dealing with addiction, including how to stop enabling addiction and how to grieve over losing someone to either death or addiction.

As someone who knows what it's like to have a family member that's addicted to drugs, the book's deeply poignant revelations helped me to unearth some buried emotions and made me feel like someone understood what I experienced. Patricia Street's highly descriptive and detailed writing is such an immersive experience that I felt as if I witnessed the events in person. The Last Stop gives readers an in-depth insight into how powerful addiction can be and other noteworthy things David and his mother endured during their tumultuous experience with addiction, including unprofessional policemen, manipulation, shame, incarceration, divorce, and more. Everyone who knows someone who struggled or is currently struggling with addiction should make sure to read this book. In today's visual world, where everything seems perfect on social media, we need more real stories, like The Last Stop, that reveal sincere, painful struggles to console people dealing with similar issues and to help them avoid some costly mistakes.

The Last Stop by Patricia Street is a powerful story of one mother’s journey through pain and grief after losing a son to substance abuse. Her son David was only fifteen when he experienced morphine after injuring his foot in the hydraulics of a Bobcat. That first shot gave him such a profound feeling and he loved it. This becomes the start of his descent into addiction, as he begins to experiment with alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and other drugs. He gets hooked on heroin and battles with this addiction for most of his adult life. This caused a deterioration in the quality of his relationships that largely affected his family. In 2014, David passed away, leaving his mother devastated at such a difficult time. A memoir in two parts, the first is an account of how David succumbed to his addiction, while Part 2 is an anthology of his writings.

As Patricia Street opens her heart with this raw and bold account of her family’s tragedy, The Last Stop is a roadmap to dealing with loss as the result of losing someone to drug addiction. Street’s writing is very candid yet it has a maternal tone that embraces you and feels reassuring as if to say that everything will be all right. What impresses me the most is David’s collection of writings that reflect the heart and soul of a tormented poet-philosopher. Above all, this memoir becomes a good real-life example of how to cope with grief and trauma. As the world suffers from a serious drug problem, this is a timely memoir of loss and healing that we all need to read.

Thank you for having the courage to share - and survive through such a horrific loss.