Free Fall: Two Decades of Rock N' Roll and Addiction: 1979-1999

Here a grieving child becomes a legally emancipated teenage runaway and pursues a rock and roll dream - and gets close. Ideas of meaning and identity, formed by a bewildered boy soothed only by books, a radio, a flimsy record player and a $50 guitar would ultimately lead a grown man into brokenness. It would just take 20 years of rock 'n' roll adventure; one that was frequently brave. And doomed from the start.

Included are 21 original song lyrics, each with its own writer's note, written and recorded during the same time period and produced by an intermittently homeless man hurtling towards end-stage addiction. By broadening the reader to listener, the music conspires with the book to reveal the unsaid.

The music spans from lush ballads to wall-of-sound rockers, to a movie soundtrack pitch, a Christmas song, and a "lost demo" from a dusty cassette. The songs themselves may be downloaded at www.bradleytsmith.net.

There is no need to read the book in order. The chapters in Free Fall are short, with the introductory sections seeking to illuminate some of the cultural, biological, psychological, and philosophical intersections that can conspire to propel addiction. Simple suggestions to help those who suffer are included; often containing sensible metaphors to help untangle addiction's maddening complexities. Chapter One, "Living for a Song" opens the story.

Hard questions drive: How does a middle class child end up in a box on the streets? When does one "decide" to become a songwriter - or a painter, dancer, actor, or poet? What beliefs sustain such perilous allegiance? How can songs this good go nowhere? Why was the near-lethal use of alcohol and other drugs logical and defensible?