Addiction Short Story Summary

Addiction is a story about a teen age boy who starts to get into drug use at a very young age. The narrator was a king in high school but now he is nothing. The story shows that as the boy increases in age the drugs increase as well. The narrator and his buddies have specific places for different drugs. Meyer uses the character of the unnamed narrator to illustrate the devastating effects of addiction on the individual.

The opening paragraphs of the story establish the narrator’s early foray into the world of high school partying. The narrator starts out at a party, when he was 15 drinking PBR. PBR is a beer known as Pabst Blue Ribbon. “I met Donny at Maria’s party when I was fifteen. I was pretty blitzed ‘cause they were handing out PBRs

At this point the narrator has lost everything, his life, his friends, and his family. “ When it’s going to be bad, you know it. When you take that hit or drop that tab, you can just tell. It’s a sinking feeling, like turbulence on a plane, like when your girlfriend says she’s missed her period, and you can’t even keep a fucking job, how could you raise a kid?(50)”. The narrator starts to go into a depression moment when he feels like there is never a time. “When will this high end so I can start the next. Then thinking, Is it over? Is it over? Is it over?(51)”. Everything in his life is just ending, friends dying week after week. “ You start to notice things. Friends dropping like fucking flies. Johnny died first Overdose. Mary next, she was driving drunk. I sat at her funeral picking at my skin ‘cause the bugs were underneath. Ashley was the next to go; she tripped off the balcony one night when she dropped to much acid. She thought she was dreaming. Spencer killed himself a month later. Andre got stabbed at a drug-deal-gone-bad. And Luke has a life sentence for robbing a liquor store and shooting a cop(51)”. The narrator is the only one left at this point. At the end of the story the narrator closes with this sentence “ I’m waiting to hear a voice, waiting to feel an angel in my bloodstream, waiting for that rush like I’ve been waiting my whole life, just waiting, waiting, waiting(51)”. This closing sentence means that out of all the trouble he has been through and all of his friends he has lost, that he is still waiting for his next high. That is what addiction will do to a person who starts out at a young at like this man did. The drugs and alcohol have already taken his life away from him but the only thing is his heart is still