Side Trips From Cowboy: Addiction, Recovery and the Western American Myth

Side Trips From Cowboy is a personal exploration of the Nez Perce story and the American West coupled with a intimate look at the nature of addiction. Anyone who is, loves or has a friend who’s an addict — and that’s nearly all of us — might benefit from this book. Follow a blue Chevy pickup with license plates that read ADVNTUR as it carries author Sandy Compton and friends across the West in the tracks of the Nez Perce who suffered the war of 1877. They are looking for ghosts and find not a few — in wild, excruciatingly beautiful country. Braided into this tale is the author’s lifelong search for Cowboy, his fight with addiction — a disease he dubs growupus interruptus — and his path through the 12 Steps of Recovery. He finds this path isn’t always — or often — easy. But it’s a damned sight better than the alternatives — death, prison or insanity. Side Trips From Cowboy is an adventure that explores wilderness — wild places both within and outside of us — and leads to startling, not-so-easy, yet somehow comforting revelations about the nature of addiction and recovery. You’re invited along on this adventure to learn this path and consider what you really want to be when you grow up.