Saving Jake: When Addiction Hits Home

D’Anne Burwell follows the long, tough road to family recovery, highlighting the shame and silence that often accompanies addiction. What’s unique about D’Anne’s book is that she incorporates the latest resources and research about addiction into her story, reinforcing the point that educating yourself about the disease of addiction will facilitate the recovery process. Through her own arduous journey to understand and cope with her son’s addiction, she has provided a wealth of resources for anyone dealing with an addicted child.I am the mother of an addicted son who found recovery from substance abuse so her words and story resonated. I was captivated by her ability to vividly capture the experience of watching addiction take over her son’s life. Her honest introspection into her own responses mirrored the heartache and confusion a parent feels when they awaken to the grim reality that addiction has the upper hand.I applaud D’Anne for breaking the silence surrounding addiction by sharing her personal story. In doing so, she offers families of addicts hope as well as a roadmap toward recovery, highlighting the importance of educating yourself about addiction as a disease and seeking professional counseling.I highly recommend this memoir to anyone who loves an addict and wants to find their way to recovery. I also recommend it for health care professionals who work in the addiction field.

If you have a family member or friend consumed with addiction, this guide will change your life. This is perhaps the most direct and accurate depiction of life describing co-dependency and addiction, an epidemic that currently overwhelms our society. Belief systems, which develop over decades, or centuries, confine us to react in a manner that is not always most beneficial to those we love. This intimate story, told by D'Anne Burwell, exposes the fallacy of doing everything for those you love, believing that it is most beneficial, rather than allowing them to have the opportunity to stand on their own.Thank you D'Anne, and Jake, for sharing your journey. You will change many lives.

I was drawn to D'Anne Burwell's "Saving Jake: When Addiction Hits Home" because I know far too many families dealing with the horror of addiction. D'Anne's startling honesty about her son's struggle, along with the crushing impact it had on her family, touched this reader to her core. In a flash, a healthy, thriving child begins to live recklessly and within the strong grips of addiction, quickly plunges to a level where he is barely living at all. How do we save our own son or daughter, husband or wife, when he or she has been abducted so abruptly from our lives?"Saving Jake", an emotionally gripping memoir references much of Ms. Burwell's research on the subject of addiction -- a lifeline for anyone searching for the means to personally cope and save a loved one from this insidious disease. The book should serve as a primer for families in crisis to help them navigate through the turmoil, stress, fear, and heartache addiction inflicts. It is also an inspiring tale of survival, and a mother's resolve to do all she can -- learn, listen, and change -- to save her child. Five stars from this avid reader!

Saving Jake offers hope and inspiration for those with kids in the early throes of addiction - but it would seem that the author was also blessed to have ample finances to provide endless opportunities for the best rehab programs money can buy. Most parents of addicted children are not so fortunate and find themselves severely hobbled by health insurance providers who deny inpatient treatment, or met out days of residencial treatment like Skittles, a few at a time - and if lucky, their loved one may achieve a recovery 20-28 spin cycle which is rarely successful in breaking down and properly addressing the complex and baffling disease of addiction, which in the lions share of cases results in relapse. What was salient to me was Burwell’s courage to address the pain and fear in a mother’s heart to step back and allow many of Jake’s choices at the tender age of 19-20 to have their natural consequences. This is often the key to a loved one’s decision to seek recovery, and as I’ve learned personally, enabling only perpetuates the addict operating system.

Sometimes something appears in your life and you are not sure how or why. I was shopping around on Amazon, most likely searching for a new recovery coin for my dad, and somehow I came across this book. I personally believe these things happen for a reason - a whisper of guidance when we are not consciously seeking it. It caught my eye immediately. I bought the kindle version because I was so anxious to read it and too impatient to wait for it to arrive in the mail. Over the next two days, I put everything else aside and devoured this book. I felt like I was living the journey with D'Anne. So many similarities to the life I have been living - praying and pleading for my Dad to seek help before it was too late. I found myself holding my breathe, sliding my finger to turn the page, praying, rooting and pleading that her son Jake would make it. I felt raw inside for her as a mother, like myself, and I couldn't help but feel her pain flow through my own veins. This can happen to any parent....any son or daughter. No one is invincible to this. It heightened my awareness as a mother, to not preach to my children, but to educate them on how and why addiction happens. Knowledge is indeed power. Please buy and read this book and share the message with as many people you can. Every word she wrote set fire within my soul and I can assure you, you will close that last page of the book a different person.

My heart goes out to this family for battling the disease of addiction, each family member addressing it in their own way. It is truly amazing how they have come out of it as an intact, strong family. I can’t package everything I want to say in such beautiful prose as D'Anne Burwell writes, but I am in awe of her courage. How hard it must have been for her to set those boundaries, and how eye opening for readers to learn of what this abuse entails. No doubt this book will be a bible for everyone going through a similar situation.

Extraordinary, honest and a journey that we can all learn from. So many parallels to other family life challenges. I am incredibly admiring of each of D'Anne's family.

I loved this book. A must read for anyone with a child in active addiction. Extremely well written, this book takes you on a Mother's journey as she tries desperately to "fix" her son (Jake) who is an addict. D'Anne chronicles the struggles of the entire family and the desperation and sadness can be felt with each turn of the page.This story parallels my own to some extent, and it gives me hope for the future that one day my daughter can find her way out of this mess of addiction.Thank you for sharing your story.

The most beautiful book I have read,so honest and heart wrenching...A must read for every parent or people in general going through addiction...

Very good book.