Dopefiend’s Redemption

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Jim Gilbert got his PhD in social work in 1995. Few who knew him as a high school dropout struggling with addiction, alcoholism and incarceration would have predicted this outcome. In Dopefiend’s Redemption, Jim writes about his good fortune-with the support of friends, family and the social safety net, he was able to change his life. As a social worker in the South Bronx, he met Kalief, an African-American youth of limitless potential but without the supports that had made Jim’s redemption possible. Jim shines a light on white privilege and generational shift, the sharp contrasts between the life of a first-generation son of Polish immigrants growing up in the 1940s and an African-American teenager coming of age in the 2000s. For Kalief’s generation there is no safety net, and social networks have been shredded by vicious policies. Suicide was the only way out in Kalief’s mind. In his grief over the loss of this exceptional young man, Jim turned to writing and found his own riveting story. His book teaches us how the complexities of our society form our lives and our possibilities; and he offers a clear picture of how our path toward a just society can succeed.