Category: Addiction & Abuse

Trafficked

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Trafficked is the haunting story of a young woman who is forced into prostitution by a close friend. This book had me so engaged that I finished it in two days. However, those two days were quickly followed by several nightmares because of some of the scars I carry from an abusive relationship in my late teenage years. I only suggest reading further in this post, as well as the book itself, if you have not been in one of these relationships or you are emotionally prepared to read things that might be upsetting to you.

Trafficked by Sophie Hayes
Trafficked by Sophie Hayes

For four years, Sophie’s friendship with Kas was perfect. He was kind and a great listening ear. They had one awkward conversation when she started dating another man, when he also confessed his love for her. But other than that, things were great. After breaking off her relationship with her boyfriend and having emergency surgery on her stomach, she was invited to go away on vacation with Kas to Italy. They began a relationship, and after the first night of their relationship, he told her he was in debt and she needed to help him. He told her that if she really loved him, like she said she did, she would sell herself as a prostitute to help him make back the money he owed. When manipulation did not work, he physically threatened her and her younger brothers, making it clear to her that she had no choice but to work for him on the streets.

“I knew people didn’t say things like that in real life, but however much I tried to tell myself it was all some elaborately cruel joke, I knew in my heart that I’d made a huge and potentially fatal error when I’d allowed myself to break my golden rule and trust him.”

Sophie Hayes

This was an emotional read because of my connections to it.

No, I was not forced into prostitution by my abusive boyfriend. But he did exhibit many of the same abusive patterns that Kas did. He was charming and charismatic (at first) to lure me into feeling safe in the relationship. When he lost his temper over something, he always found a way to make it my fault. When I took the blame to try to make peace with a situation, though, he would play the self-pity card. Everything that he did was to control my emotions and my behaviors. Where emotional manipulation alone didn’t do the trick, physical and sexual abuse further degraded my self-worth to the point where I believed no one else would want or believe me.

“I never spoke unless Kas spoke to me, and when he asked me simple questions that I couldn’t answer–usually because I was too anxious to be able to focus my thoughts–I told myself he was right and I was becoming more stupid with every day that passed.”

Sophie Hayes

Sophie struggled during and after her ordeal with feeling as if the entire thing were her fault. In the same way, I struggled after my abusive relationship. I knew logically that it wasn’t my fault. Emotionally, I could not process how I could let myself fall into such a relationship. Others who spoke harmful words about the relationship after the fact only did things to damage my view of myself. Although I had many people who were overwhelmingly supportive, some were not. Louder than any of those voices, though, was the memory of his voice saying things meant to tear me down. Even after years of counseling and four and a half years of a happy marriage later, I occasionally think of some of those things he said that destroyed my self-confidence.

“I know that if someone told me that what happened to me had happened to them, I’d feel sorry for them and wouldn’t blame them for one moment. Even so, I still felt as though it was all somehow my fault.”

Sophie Hayes

One last thing I found as a point of connection with Sophie was the struggle between telling people about the trauma I endured and not telling them. Sophie did not choose to tell many people about the abuse and trafficking she endured, and struggled to explain some of her fears and behaviors to her coworkers and friends. While I have tried to be fairly open about my past, it is still hard to explain why certain things can completely unnerve me. I can come completely unglued if someone touches me on the knee or leg. If anyone looks like the boyfriend who abused me, I am wary of that person even if I know it isn’t logical. Certain foods make me feel physically ill because I have only ever eaten them with him and his family. Although I do not think about him often, those fears and scars linger and can come back in an instant.

“Not telling people can make things difficult, though–for example, when I overract to something and can’t explain why, such as the time someone at work fired a toy gun at me and I fell on the floor with my hands over my head, screaming.”

Sophie Hayes

This book brings great awareness to human trafficking issues.

Sophie Hayes was an educated woman with a family who loved her. She was in her twenties with a stable job and an apartment. By most measures, she was not an ideal target for human trafficking except that someone she cared about took four years to groom her. He then lured her out of the country and threatened her younger brothers. He convinced her that he had people working for him everywhere and that he could see everything she did. She was afraid of her customers, strangers, and even the police.

Several times she was brought in by the police, who treated her like a criminal. They were convinced that she was doing this on her own free will, and made her life on the streets even more difficult. Although prostitution is a crime, she wishes that they would have asked questions that would have helped her feel safe to share what was really happening. She wishes that they would have recognized the signs that she was being abused and trafficked, and sought to get her home to her family. It was not until she was so sick that she went to the hospital instead of “work” that she ended up making contact with her family and getting rescued out of the life Kas had forced her into living.

Although this book brought up some bad memories (and may for anyone who has been in any kind of abusive relationship), I still felt like it added value because of the interest and the information it gave me about the issue of human trafficking. While Sophie is from England and this happened in Italy, human trafficking happens here in the United States, and knowing the signs can help those who are trapped in this horrible situation. Each one of us can do something about human trafficking when we see the signs. For more information on recognizing the signs of human trafficking, read here.

Good Chinese Wife

I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

My words cannot fully summarize how brilliantly written this book is and all of the reasons you should read it. Susan Blumberg-Kason gives and honest and raw look into the ups and downs of an emotionally abusive relationship that crosses cultural divides.

Good Chinese Wife by Susan Blumberg-Kason
Good Chinese Wife by Susan Blumberg-Kason

From the first few pages, the reader knows that this book will be about a woman who falls in love with a man who does not treat her the way that he should. At each turn of the page, her beautiful foreshadowing left me breathless, asking, “What is this guy going to do to her next?”

Like all abusive relationships, though, it was not always bad. She detailed her courtship to Cai and the ways that he made her feel special when they were dating. She shares the way he wooed her while they were both studying in Hong Kong. She was from America and he was from mainland China.

When things started cropping up in their relationship, she chalked it up to cultural differences or his own stress over his doctoral work. Instead of spending their wedding night with her, Cai ordered porn and told her to go to sleep. He regularly put his preferences and comfort before hers when decisions needed to be made. When his professors pushed her to drink alcohol and Susan expressed her discomfort with the situation, Cai exploded with anger. One night, she caught him flirting with a prostitute on the phone. Despite these things, she did what she could to maintain peace because she did not want to go home to her parents with a failed marriage.

Two things Kai did stood out as especially dreadful.

The first happened when they were still in China. Susan contracted an STD, despite having been married to Cai for a year and a half and having no other partners. When she started treatment and told him that the doctor insisted that he start it as well, he bristled at the suggestion. He denied having an affair, although she knew that was the only way it could have been contracted. He then looked it up in a Chinese disease dictionary, started laughing, and told her it was a “women’s disease.” Thus ended the conversation.

The second thing happened after they had moved to the United States and had their son. Cai frequently got frustrated with their son’s crying and would grab him and dangle him over the stairwell in their home, threatening to drop him. He would shut him in an empty room, leaving him on the floor. The things he did to his child were scary, and motivation for her to get out.

This book serves as a great warning about the red flags of abusive relationships.

It is important for young women to know what red flags are for an emotionally and physically abusive relationship so that they can avoid being in one themselves. If they are already in one, seeing those red flags develop into an even worse version of the situation they are in might be the motivation they need to get out before the situation escalates. Reading a book like this one can give a woman information on red flags in an emotional, but concrete way. Susan brings her story to life in such a personal way that you cannot help but cheer for her when she gets out of her marriage with Cai.

“I’d been in this dysfunctional relationship for five years and could no longer tell what about it was normal and what was unacceptable.”

Susan Blumberg-Kason

For the woman who may find herself in a relationship or marriage to someone like Cai, reading a book like this one may give her the inspiration to reach out for help to get out of that relationship. Though Susan’s situation is unique in many ways, especially in that it is a relationship across cultural boundaries, there is a lot to be learned about the way she escaped. She sought the help of a lawyer and her mother, then left while he was at work. For those wishing to escape who do not have someone they trust to help them, there are centers willing to help women and children fleeing abusive relationships.

Methland

I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Confession: I didn’t read this book.

Methland by Nick Reding
Methland by Nick Reding

Now before you shun me for not being a good book reflection blogger, let me defend and clarify my confession a little. I read half of this book, and fully intend to finish it eventually. However, this ended up being a much heavier book than anticipated and I have had to read it in smaller chunks to be able to fully process the information.

Several months ago, I read a memoir written by a mother and daughter about the daughter’s heroin addiction, and how beating that addiction both strained and strengthened their relationship in different ways. While I knew the content of this book would be different because it was looking at the town of Oelwein, Iowa instead of the lives of one family, I did not anticipate how much more emotionally draining it would be to read the many snapshots painted by Reding in this book.

This book gives an up-close look at how meth pulls apart the lives of those who use it.

Meth is so unlike any other drug. While other addictions may seem treatable and beatable, through the stories of the people of Oelwein an image appeared of a drug that has an addictive quality that is invincible. One woman built a drug empire and after years clean in prison, went back to those same drugs upon release. Another addict, though his skin and flesh melted off in a chemical fire while disposing of evidence of his meth lab, went back to meth after getting out of the hospital and jail. Though one addict in the book was nine months clean and living with parents desperate to help him stay that way, there was fear from everyone (including himself) that he would go back to using meth. No matter how long they were clean or what circumstances faced them, those held under the grip of meth addiction seemed powerless to fight the high that meth gave to them.

“His job was increasingly directed by the belief that in solving the town’s economic dilemma, the drug problem, too, would abate. That was the hope, anyway. On another level, meth seemed to operate completely outside the bounds of any rational, calculated variables.”

Nick Reding

The reason this was a difficult book to read was because I love a meth addict.

Despite the fact meth has taken a toll on his physical and mental health, someone I love continues to use the drug he has used for years. He is the main reason that I was interested in reading this book. I was searching for understanding, and on some level I found it. Although I still see meth as a nasty drug because of all of the side effects that come with it, meth gives the addict energy and euphoria that cannot be compared to anything else. At one point in our nation’s history, a form of it was legal because of the way it allowed people to work longer and harder. It was marketed as a weight loss drug. The fact it makes people feel good is undeniable. And for a while, at least, it allows them to work more (which is why it is so popular among the working class).

This book gave me the glimpse into meth addiction that I needed to both understand my loved one’s addiction and understand that there was very little that I could do to motivate him to quit the drug. While a non-addicted person or a person addicted to something less mind-altering may have responded to my pleas to get clean differently, it has been good for me to better understand the immensity of the burden of those fighting meth addiction. In reading about the addict who was nine months clean and living with his parents, one quote stuck out to me: “For Major, waiting to see what price his son would pay for his transgressions was a daily reminder of why he had to stay straight. But his anxiety and guilt were also an hourly motivation to get high.” A person recovering from addiction has to want to stay straight more than they want to drown out the anxiety and guilt.

While I like to believe that if I were faced with an addiction I would stop using whatever addictive substance if a loved one asked. After slightly better understanding exactly what addiction, especially addiction to meth does to a person, I’m not entirely sure what I would do. In the grips of addiction, I doubt I would be strong enough to get clean alone. I am increasingly convinced that only God can help someone break the bonds of addiction.