Product Overview
I was born in 1953 in Wichita, Kansas, and I guess you could say my life got unsettled pretty fast. So begins Gerry Brewster's recounting of a life derailed by child abuse and drug addiction. Like other children growing up in the fifties and sixties, Brewster was an undiagnosed sufferer of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Physically abused by the adult men in his life, who considered his behavior oppositional and disrespectful, Brewster developed self-esteem problems early on. Then he was sent to a Catholic boarding school, and all hell broke loose for the young boy. Sexually violated by priests and violently abused by others, Gerry came away more damaged than ever. He learned to distrust everyone, while at the same time he craved a normal family life and true friends. But growing up, his negative experiences always stood in the way. Eventually, he fell in with gamblers, mobsters, and drug abusers and spent the next thirty years addicted to heroin and other opiates. His life didn't just come apart at the seams-it never got sewn together to begin with. Yet Gerry is a survivor. In Why, Brother, Why? he describes a long, harrowing fall toward absolute rock bottom, only to pull himself out again through sheer determination. Told with light humor and sometimes skin-crawling detail, Why, Brother, Why? is a positive message for other addicts and victims of child abuse, which can be summed up as Forgive others, forgive yourself, and never give up on life.
