I just finished the book 2 hours ago, so it's quite fresh in my head. Wanted to say a few things:
1) gave me more empathy for people who struggle with addiction. I'm glad he explained how it felt for him…why he had to keep drinking a bottle of vodka every night, when it wouldn't make sense to a person who doesn't relate to addiction
2) He weirdly evangelized his parents. I thought it was odd how much he kept remarking on their attractiveness and beauty. In my view, his low self esteem came from the ways in which they failed them. If he could only realize that, not put them on a pedestal, his self worth likely would have improved
3) It annoys me how many people disliked the book because it wasn't a happy book about Friends or because of how he treated women. We are so lucky to have a book so candid about the vicious nature of addiction and someone daring to be honest about how ugly it can truly get. He clearly wrote that he didn't want to treat women this way, but his low sense of worth resulted in self-sabotaging behavior each time. He even writes in his end chapter how much he aspired to be with a loving wife and have children.
I just find it wild that someone can be vulnerable enough to expose the ugliness of their life to the ENTIRE world, share their insecurities about not being loveable if truly known (page 201), die from that exact addiction, then readers to say the book was crap.
Could you imagine if you were murdered, then Law and Order tv series made an episode about you, then someone watching Netflix skipped it because it was too boring?? So yeah, I find some peoples' comments hard to read in other threads.
by coco24601__