Yoga Cocaine
You mean you’ve never done cocaine?” my friend, Lisa, asked incredulously. We were sitting across from one another at Gryphon Coffee in Wayne, PA.
I shook my head, no.
“Well, I have and you managed to capture the experience perfectly.”
I’d given Lisa an advance copy of my forthcoming book, Yoga Cocaine, to read and review.
She reiterated her question. “You mean you never did drugs?”
I blew on my tea – still too hot for comfort.
“I smoked pot a handful of times in high school and college,” I replied. “But, beyond that, no. The last time I had so much as a sip of alcohol, I was nine.”
Lisa didn’t ask me to elaborate. She should have. My first and only drinking escapade is one of my favorite stories. It involves a lack of supervision and mistaking “adult” punch for children’s punch. Yup! I got wasted while surrounded by family members.
“Well, congratulations,” Lisa said. “You managed to capture addiction perfectly.”
I didn’t say I wasn’t familiar with addiction. Authors are often reflected in their characters and I relate in innumerable ways to Jessica, the primary protagonist in my forthcoming new novel. I struggled for decades with addictive eating cycles and seeking validation from men.
Writing Jessica’s story—in which, like my recovery story, yoga played an integral part—was an opportunity to illuminate the human psyche in all its self-destructive complexity.
In the end, here’s what Lisa wrote about the book:
For anyone who has known addiction and sobriety—or wondered about it—Yoga Cocaine is a powerful, painful, hopeful, inspiring, and addicting story that you won’t be able to put down. Pick it up now and dive in.
Yoga Cocaine comes out on January 1st, 2020, but I decided to give you a sneak peak of the book before anybody else. Here’s the first chapter for free.
