Don Lattin

Distilled Spirits: Getting High, Then Sober, with a Famous Writer, A Forgotten Philosopher, and a Hopeless Drunk by Don Lattin

★ ½

This is a memoir about a religion journalist who struggled through drug and alcohol abuse for many decades until cleaning up his act in the 2000s. Along the way he intertwines his story with the famous writer (Aldous Huxley), the forgotten philosopher (Gerald Heard), and the hopeless drink (Bill Wilson – co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous). The search for spirituality and peace are primary in this book. Sounds interesting, right? Well…no. It wasn’t. Don Lattin’s struggle rarely comes out during this book, leaving me feeling no attachment towards the actual writer. Everything is muddled with the story of these people and with plenty of others added in, it just became a mess. It was hard for me to concentrate or care for the most part. There were some interesting tidbits and humorous parts but not enough to redeem itself. I think the book had potential but it was lost in trying to add so much into such a small book (270 pages). It often just felt like the ramblings of someone and I often skimmed, then having to go back because I had no idea what happened…not that I particularly cared, I was just hoping I had missed something to redeem this. No luck there. Oh well, on to bigger and better things I hope!
… (lisätietoja)

This is not the easiest book to form an opinion on. The topic is probably one of the most heinous things to be written about - the systematic sexual, emotional and physical abuse of children under their brand of Christianity.

The writing itself is average, but the topic overcomes the sub-par writing being such a... shocking time line of events which numerous people thought were acceptable under the guise of their religion: incest, paedophilia, child pornography, adultery and corporal punishment are all prevalent.

There are strange gaps in the book's storyline that are puzzling, and distract from the on going disaster of the children's lives and the at times seemingly escalating depravity of the adult members of the group. If not for such gaps I would rate it higher.

Possibly the most distasteful and deplorable part of the entire book is that despite all the actions which have taken place, all the abuse, sexual and physical, the entire leadership has legally walked away clean as they covered their tracks, continually changed their names and moved from country to country.

These people are, basically, evil.

They used religion as a means to exercise control over others to abuse them.

This is a book about that.… (lisätietoja)