Book Review: Living Jonathans Life: A Doctors Descent Into Darkness & Addiction

This book review is part of a series that covers the topic of Substance Abuse. Substance Abuse is a long-term, pathological use of alcohol or drugs, characterized by daily intoxication, inability to reduce consumption, and impairment in social or occupational functioning. Scott M. Davis is the Official Guide to Substance Abuse. Living Jonathans Life: A Doctors Descent Into Darkness & Addiction, by Scott M. Davis, is a valuable resource for people interested in Substance Abuse and it is available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

A true story of identical twin brothers, each fighting similar physical and emotional battles. One would lose his life; the other would nearly self-destruct.

The day I watched my identical twin brother die before my eyes, I experienced a loss that was devastating and without comparison. With his passing, I lost much more than a best friend, a confidante, and a brother; I lost a human mirror, a reflection into which I had always been able to look and from which I could gain strength. When Jonathan died, that once-radiant mirror turned black as stone. I could no longer see myself as I did before, let alone see myself living without him. His disease had claimed me, too.

Wracked with guilt that he, an aspiring medical student, couldn't save his brother and plagued with nagging questions about the twin he thought he knew, Scott Davis, M. D. , turned to what he knew could cure all: a pill. And then another, and another, until even they couldn't numb the pain--the same kind of pains in the same places that his brother, Jonathan, experienced as he was dying. The phantom pains baffled medical experts, who tried surgery and morphine to no avail. When Dr. Davis began writing prescriptions for himself, it was only a matter of time before he was discovered and his world came crashing down. Ironically, it was his brother's words--in a stack of hidden poems stashed away--that showed Scott the way back to the life he knew and the brother he hadn't.

Living Jonathan's Life is a riveting, heartfelt tapestry of brotherly love and bonds, of family ties and self-renewal, that will strike a chord with anyone who has loved and lost.

In a charged, honest memoir, physician Davis relates his struggle with addiction and recovery following the 1993 loss of his twin brother, Jonathan, to AIDS. Hopscotching through their lives together and apart, Davis tells twin stories of disease-his an addiction to pain medication-that take the author through grim, desperate times, but culminate in a hopeful breakthrough. Almost as long as the narrative are the appendices, which include a directory of treatment programs, intervention resources and the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Sentimental touches-like liberal use of poems from Jonathan's found journal-may not be to everyone's taste, but this brief memoir makes a detailed primer on the struggles of the addicted, and a fine resource for anyone facing a substance abuse problem, their own or that of a loved one.

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