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"The third panel in Brown's masterwork triptych on addiction from youth to sixty, Apology to the Young Addict also accomplishes at last a staggeringly rare mercy -- on the ghosts of memory, the ravages of disease, the brutal hypocrisies of religion, and finally -- most shockingly -- on himself." -- Gina Frangello, author of Every Kind of Wanting and A Life in Men Husband, addict, father, skeptic. Now sixty -- with years of sobriety under his belt -- and the father of three sons, James Brown writes about finding a new path in life, making peace with the family whose ghosts have haunted him, and helping the next generation of addicts overcome their disease. Opening with the tragic tale of an elderly couple consumed by opioid addiction and moving through the horrors of a Las Vegas massacre, these essays draw on Brown's personal journey of recovery to illustrate how an individual life, in all its messiness and charm, can offer a blueprint for healing. Evocative and hopeful, Apology to the Young Addict is a reinvention of the recovery memoir and a lasting testimony from a master writing at his peak.