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Once in a great while a book takes us to a place we have never been before -- a place that is unique and unforgettable, both life-altering and life-affirming. Whiskey's Children is such a book. It is an intimate glimpse into the sould of Jack Erdmann, an intelligent, charismatic man who also happened to be a fourth-generation alcoholic. It is the story of Jack's extraordinary journey from the pain and despair of addiction and self-loathing to the miracle of recovery and his own renewed faith in God. It is a searing tale of loss and redemption -- of one man's heroic struggle to break the cycle of self-destruction forever. Jack Erdmann's message is a simple one: as long as there is life, there is hope -- and the possibility of change. Whiskey's Children opens in St. Louis in 1934. That was when Erdmann, the son of a jazz musician and an ex-chorus dancer, first became aware of his father's drinking, of the destruction it wrought. Jack's own descent into the hellish world of alcohol abuse began when he was an eight-year-old altar boy, dipping into the communion wine. He drank his way through the loneliness and fear of adolescence and a successful stint in the Air Force before alcohol began to take its cruel toll: A marriage built on alcoholic dependency that ended in violence; the loss of a once-promising career; the price it exacted on his own deeply wounded children; the dizzying slide into a life of hallucinations, paranoia, suicidal longings, incarcerations and institutionalizations. Jack Erdmann's road to salvation was a long and harrowing one. But it led to a reincarnation of sorts: the chance to live again, to build a new life out of the bitter ashes of pain and defeat -- a life based on kindness, unselfishness, empathy and, above all, honesty. After a lifetime of alcoholism, Jack Erdmann began the path to sobriety and rejoined the human race. A fervent plea to break patterns of dependency and abuse as well as a moving testament to the human capacity both to endure pain and to achieve grace, Whiskey's Children stands with the very best literature about alcoholism. Told with an intense honesty all its own, this is a lyrical powerfully touching autobiography that offers recognition to those who have been there, enlightenment to those who haven't, and inspiration and hope to those still fighting to find their way. It is, in the words of Anne Lamott, "a story so beautifully told it will leave you shaking with wonder."

"One of those rare books that is both profound and as entertaining as a movie. Hang on -- you are in for the ride of your life." Anne Lamott "Redemptive and gripping." Patricia Holt, San Francisco Chronicle "This book will hit people right in the face. The Lost Weekend reads like a Bible story compared to this. Everyone, not just alcoholics and their families, should read this book. Wow!" Paul Meiners, M.D. "Addictive. A page-turner." St Louis Post-Dispatch "Heartbreaking and soaring. A testament of survival and hope for all who suffer from this affliction." Senator George McGovern A former salesman, Jack Erdmann is now an author and lecturer in San Francisco. He has been sober for nearly 20 years. Larry Kearney is a poet and novelist. He was born in Brooklyn in 1943, moved to San Francisco in 1964, and subsequently published nine books of poetry. He was drunk between 1959 and 1981, but hasn't been since.

A lot of the book involves your negative experience as a child. Do you blame your parents for your alcoholism?

A lot of children go through bad times without becoming alcoholic. Alcoholism runs in families, genetically, and when the emotional triggers are present to go with the genes, alcoholism is almost inevitable. The terrible thing is that one alcoholic family tends to insure the presence of those triggers in the next family down the line.

How do you feel about your father now?

Love, hatred, fear, understanding and respect -- all the emotions that go into any parent/child relationship. In many ways I'm still trying to deal with him. He was an alcoholic and pill addict and there's nothing he did that I can't understand. That doesn't make it hurt any less. Somewhere along the line you begin to come to terms with the fact that not only can't the pain be killed, it shouldn't be killed. You have to feel it if you're going to be capable of understanding or forgiveness.

Why did it take you so long to stop? It must have been clear to you, when you'd lost everything and your life had become a hell, that you had to stop. Why did you keep going?

I was crazy. When everything is gone it feels like alcohol is the only friend you have left. The terminal alcoholic has all the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia and while you can know that you have to stop, there's another voice, another mind almost, that says you can't, that says that if you do, everything you fear is going to come rushing in on you. In the last stages, alcohol is on one side and pure terror on the other.

Why do you think psychiatry doesn't work with alcoholics?

First, because alcoholism is a combination of genetic disposition and emotional triggers. Second, because the alcoholic is impossibly sly and manipulative and can fake almost any level of commitment or emotion. His whole life has been dedicated to safeguarding his supply and there is no lie or evasion he's not willing to use. Third, because the psychiatric experience is one-on-one and lacks the strength of a peer group. Fourth, because the alcoholic only respects information from one who knows. Fifth, because you cannnot address a mental disturbance when the patient is toxic: the alcohol screens off areas that need to be addressed.

What happens when someone won't forgive you?

It hurts like hell and there's nothing you can do about it. You may not have been responsible when you did all the things you did, but you're damn well accountable, and if someone chooses to refuse your amends then you try to hold your head up as you walk away. No one is under any obligation to make things easy for you. You listen to the other voices, the one's who've already been there. You keep going.

"Okay, you had a good time for as long as it lasted, now you've stopped and we're supposed to feel sorry for you. Go to hell."

A drunk can't respond to that. He can say 'it wasn't a good time,' but that won't make it. He can say 'I don't want you to feel sorry for me,' but neither will that. All the drunk can say is 'here's what happened, here's what I did and I don't do it anymore. I don't say these things so you'll feel sorry for me, I say them so the information gets passed along to those who need it.'

What's your perception of God? What role can organized religion play in recovery?

My perception of God is that of a power greater than myself which offers love and relief from slavery. Not from pain, not from ordinary human difficulty, but from the hell of the closed system, the kill-the-pain-at-all-costs misery of the mind that only knows itself. Only thinks it knows itself. I very much believe in the proposition that it is a fatal error to assume you know more about yourself than God does. God lets you see yourself as more like than unlike other human beings. Organized religion is fine to the degree that the individual alcoholic can accept it.

Do you still want to drink?

I don't want to but I'm still addicted and every once in a while the old images of comfort and escape will come up and I have to shake myself. You know, ordinary guys go home after a tough day and they can have a martini and relax a little. I can't do that, no drunk can. I'm physically and emotionally sensitive to alcohol in a way non-alcoholics aren't.

What should parents be conscious of around their children?

First, that the child's perception of the randomness and sudden fear that go with adult drunkenness begins very early. What drunken parental behavior produces is a basic sense of instability and apprehension and lingering panic. Second, that if you do drink heavily, if you suspect at all that you or your spouse is alcoholic, your child is at risk and every episode of drunkenness is providing an emotional trigger for his/her future drinking. Third, that you can't pretend. Children are phenomenally sensitive to shifts in voice and behavior. If you lie, you let the child know how to handle it when he's called on his own drinking.

When you provide emotional triggers in a family with a predisposition to alcoholism, you might as well be leaving a loaded gun on the coffee table. Providing the emotional triggers in a family where the alcohol problem is not quite so obvious is just as dangerous -- the disease may skip a generation, or lurk in a corner of little known cousins.

What do you say to teenagers who want to try drinking?

There isn't much you can say. I tell my story. In any group of teenagers there are some who can drink and some who are alcoholic. For the alcoholics, their only hope is not to start. This is quite apart from the obvious hazards that come with the combination of adolescence and a powerful central nervous system depressant. There are some who aren't alcoholic who won't survive because they get behind the wheel of a car. It's a nightmare.

The teenage experience is harrowing enough. For those from abusive families, even the non-alcoholic variety, the behaviors facilitated by alcohol are utterly terrifying to any parent who cares. The teenager who has always felt different, unloved and insecure is going to experience a massive release from alcohol. With it will come risk-taking, promiscuity and a regular, mechanical erosion of self-worth.

©1998, ProMotion, inc.

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