Paraguay RPCV Toren Volkmann : Inside Our Drink
Inside Our Drink
Our Drink: Detoxing the Perfect Family portrays the choking of an adolescent by binge drinking and alcohol addiction. Toren and his Perfect Family drag this drunken party straight into American homes in commonplace nonchalance, mislabeled under the term "success."
Toren's has been a life no mother wants revealed yet others would find exhilarating and shockingly sensational. But there's a clincher: it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for the cool guy from the cool family and it might not work for so many others who will read the book.
Invincible Toren had a college diploma, a competitive spot in South America with the Peace Corps, spoke three languages, and could charm his way around the world. He didn't think that drug and alcohol information applied to him. And the family missed it. If this family is the average family, and the addicted son represents a flourishing college graduate, then there must be millions more like them….and tens of thousands more who are or will be facing alcoholism.
The voice of the story switches between mother and son to provide a dynamic combination of inner monologue, narration and alcohol information. This patchwork disarms the reader by its honesty. Our Drink offers a genuine picture of what hard drinking does to a young man, a family, a society.
The reader can dip into an addict's tragic brew while learning something. Integrated within the book are facts about addiction, binge drinking and alcohol abuse. There are 65 references and over 35 resources and links.
The story could take place in any cul-de-sac; it's one that is happening in epidemic form. The key to dealing with alcoholism isn't just a pile of scientific data on drinking and addiction---it's all the relevant statistics cultivated in the Petri dish of the family. That's why it's Our Drink. It's owned by all of us.
