The Last Stop by Patricia Street

The Last Stop is a book that frankly details the author Patricia Street’s interactions with her son David, a long-term addict. She tells us a story of many years in which she attempts to cope with a person she loves very much but does not trust very much; someone she wants to believe but is always suspicious that what she is being told is not the truth; someone she wants to assist but is reluctant to facilitate.

It is an emotional tightrope that seems to stretch perpetually into the future – a “crazy addiction train” which feels like it is never going to stop and reach “The Last Stop” or which you feel like you can never get off…unless it derails. David’s addiction is realistically portrayed by Street as she recounts the events that she feels marked the start of his involvement with heroin.

From this point, we are taken through the years of court appearances, follow-up promises, treatment, and occasional tranquil intervals. Although Street’s account of her events can come out as emotionally subdued, I appreciated how frank and nearly realistic it was. It lacked sentimentality. I sympathised with the author’s plight.

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No parent would ever want to experience this, and after reading Street’s book, it is evident that managing a relationship with a loved one who is an addict is demanding and relentless but not without moments of optimism. The second part of the book, which is a compilation of David’s own writings, which include his philosophical musings, poetry, stories, or Facebook chats, reinforces the overriding emotion I took away from it—the waste of it all.

Through the inclusion of his writings, a clear image of Street’s son as an intellectual man with desires to become a published writer is painted. He is a man deserving of serious study and reflection. “So Seldom My Thoughts Ring True,” one of his poems, struck a deep chord with me as a fleeting window into David’s perspective, full of candour and honesty, offering insight into a character full of paradoxes. I can’t think of a greater way for Street to express her love for her son than by giving his writings a chance to be read by a wider audience.

About The Book

David is only fifteen years old when he first feels morphine flow through his veins after his foot is crushed in the hydraulics of a Bobcat. From that moment for the rest of his life, he chases the feeling morphine gave him. Alcohol, marijuana, cocaine – he goes through drugs like candy, but it isn’t until he finds heroin that he is satisfied.

Through his personal correspondence and essays, David’s story unfolds as he goes from being an average guy to being a heroin addict. His heartbreaking journey deepens as he takes his family with him down the dark and dangerous road of heroin addiction where he eventually loses everything, including his life.

Parents will easily relate to Patricia’s memoir, which is written based on her experiences and mistakes as she learned ways to cope with her son’s downward spiral into addiction. She puts into words what families need to know to deal with the horrors of addiction, including the importance of letting go of the shame and stigma, not enabling, learning to love with detachment, and why grieving a death from addiction is two-fold. Things only a mother who has been through it can understand.

This mother-and-son combined memoir is a window into the tragedy and impacts the opioid crisis is having on addicts and their families across America. It gives hope, compassion, and guidance to families who are immersed in the life-altering aspects of active addiction and struggling for recovery, and for those families left behind when recovery stops being a choice.