Memoirs of a Miracle: A Journey; from Destitution to Deliverance

by John McHugh, Jessica Wong (Editor), Sheridan Wright (Illustrator)

Overview

After living, wild and free, on the beaches of California for the better part of five years I found myself chronically ill, penniless, and sleeping in the bushes of Golden Gate Park. This book is a first-hand account of my personal struggles with alcoholism, chronicling my descent into despair and homelessness followed by a complete metamorphosis through acceptance and reliance on a higher power.
Join me on my journey back from the brink of death to a wonderful, productive life that can only be descibed as miraculous.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780999545508
Publisher:	John McHugh
Publication date:	11/22/2017
Pages:	302
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

John McHugh is a drunk and a bum. He has changed a lot in the past 12 years, he has earned two advanced degrees in Engineering, he owns a home, he makes a nice living and has time and money to share with friends and family. However, all his considerable success is contingent on one irrevocable truth, it will all be gone, indeed he will be gone if he chooses to drink again. Yet sometimes he still wants to, sometimes it seems like a really good idea. He doesn't think about the nights lying on the sidewalk in the freezing rain, he dismisses the shame and frustrations of a dozen arrests, he forgets about consoling the grief-stricken families of friends who died beside him, and the warnings from a hundred doctors who told him that his next drink would probably be his last. A few beers, a couple shots it all seems so harmless, just like a good way to have a little fun. That is the power of addiction. The solution, his "cure" if you will is found within the pages of this book. It was his way to get sober, but more importantly his way to stay sober, to live sober. It is one man's recipe for becoming happy, joyous and free.

Editorial Reviews

2019-01-22

McHugh's debut memoir recounts his difficulties with alcohol, the hopelessness of life on the street, and his road to recovery.

The author opens his story with an event in 2005 that set him on a healthier path. He was lying in a hospital bed hooked up to IVs, and a doctor told him, "Your heart is functioning at 7% of normal"—and the hospital staff had "never seen anyone survive at less than ten." In the past, McHugh says, he would have sneaked out of the hospital, against doctors' advice. But not this time: "My battered body teetered on the brink of catastrophic failure." The author then takes readers on an odyssey as he remembers his days on the street as a homeless alcoholic. At one point, McHugh built a makeshift lean-to in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park for protection against a coming storm, only to have it fail; he awakened in a cold, rain-and-urine-soaked sleeping bag and shouted, "God my life sucks!" Then he searched for the "40 ounce Steele 211 malt liquor" stashed in nearby scrub brush. Indeed, the focus of each day was on his next drink; at one point, he tells of bartering English muffins from a church lunch for more booze. He established a camaraderie with other homeless people at the "Pits," and they became his "surrogate family for the next few years." Throughout this memoir, McHugh gets across how much he relished the nonjudgmental acceptance, kindness, and even generosity of many of his fellow street people. His choice to only minimally develop these secondary figures in his remembrance is appropriate, though, as he depicts them as merely part of an unending party. Over the course of this tale of woe and redemption, McHugh berates himself for becoming what he believed to be a degenerate, but he acknowledges the fun that he had as well. Still, the story doesn't ever become repetitive, and the ending is satisfying. Families of addicts, in particular, will find this book to be a must-read.

A brutally honest and informative portrait of homeless survival and the dynamics of addiction.

Kirkus Reviews