Drugs Addiction and Incest

High On ArrivalHigh on Arrival

By: Mackenzie Phillips

Simon & Shuster 2009

Mackenzie Phillips, the star of One Day at a Time, recounts the details of her life, highlighting her drug addiction and the shocking and dysfunctional relationship she had with her father, John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas, in this stunning sometimes disturbing memoir.

Most of the book deals with her drug addiction, because it was a part of her life and who she was for so long.

Phillips and her brother grew up as many children from divorced families do, living with their mother during the week, while spending weekends with their father. However; John Phillips was not your typical father. Drug use ran rampant in her father’s life and for Mackenzie; it became a normal way of life. She had her first experience with drugs when she was ten years old. Even being taught by her father how to do cocaine and shoot up as her life became a routine of drugs and partying, as her life spirals out of control, shooting up every twenty minutes.

The most shocking revelation in the book is her waking up, after a drug filled night, in the middle of having sex with her father and admitting that over time the incest became consensual.

There are some bright spots to her story, entering rehab to become sober for ten years, long enough to raise her son. But her story is one of deep despair and drug addiction, loss and longing. About trying to find acceptance and love from a parent, even if it means doing the unthinkable. She takes us inside the mind of a junkie, and shows us that life, for a junkie is all about getting the next fix. And the bridges burned along the way.

Reading a story like hers really made me realize how good my life is and glad that I have never suffered the affliction of addiction. The way she grew up, her father honestly didn’t think there was anything wrong with doing drugs or exposing his children to it. They felt it was what “cool” or “enlightened” people did. And she had experienced so much by the time she was even 14.

In many ways I think she was a victim of circumstance, of her upbringing. But one can’t ignore that she also had many opportunities that many others don’t. Her money financed her habit and when she wanted to go to rehab, she had the money for that too. Most in our society don’t have that luxury.

I feel a little bad that I couldn’t put this book down; but I was just rooting for things to turn out.

And I really enjoyed the telling of her life.

 

Story                     ***

Readability            ****

Overall Rating       ***1/2