Paradise

Abstract

Paradise is a collection of creative nonfiction essays, fragments, and vignettes that explore addiction, the process of recovery, and most importantly, what it means to be oneself. Focusing less on the traditional grittiness of an addiction memoir and instead on narratives, this collection seeks to discover who is really in charge of one's own story, if anyone is at all. The memoir leads the narrator to question whether he has ever been present in his own life. Beginning as an autoethnography of sorts, exploring life as an addict and then a former addict, the narrator moves to question what it means to be in control of one's own life.