On his first day of Catholic school, six-year old Kevin Carroll endured Sister Mary Monster’s first smack in the head for cracking a joke. Ten agonizing years of corporal punishment in the Christian behavior modification program failed to suppress his rebellious spirit. After ten years of escapades and escapes, he completed the eighth grade and left school to find work, and at age sixteen he met and married Ellen, the love of his life.

The first time Kevin tried heroin he was sure he’d never wind up a strung-out junkie. Six months later he did indeed become a heroin addict, and for twenty-seven years he haunted the darkest, most dangerous streets of Harlem and the South Bronx to support his habit. He worked for the NY City Sanitation Department, always in trouble, always talking his way out of a termination, until yet another arrest for drug possession threatened his career and his pension.

Going away to a three-month drug rehabilitation program, Kevin began to write about his life. It was cathartic. It was healing. When he finally breathed the fresh air of a life without drugs for the first time in his adult life, his loving wife Ellen had the biggest smile. Now twenty-three years clean, his hilarious, harrowing and heartwarming story will captivate readers and give hope to anyone who has been mistreated and believes there is no hope.