Following over twenty years of abstinence from drink and drugs, much contemplation of natural phenomena, prayer and meditation, Jack Llewellyn describes with great candour his slippery descent into addiction - to sex as well as alcohol and drugs - and his subsequent liberation from total dependency and looming death. Surviving Addictions lights a beacon for seemingly hopeless alcoholics and drug-addicts who can see no way out of chronic addiction. It also broaches insights, explored more fully in a second book, that could help others, whether substance abusers or not, as it chronicles the author's attempts to unravel mysteries of the universe he had never before contemplated. This first book (c. 64,000 words) is in two parts. Descent Into Hell tells in some 50,000 words the story of Jack's early life and his gradual but inexorable decline, while Journey Into Light describes the start of his upward path towards enlightenment. 'After an adventurous life that encompassed material success and increasingly frequent arrests and hospitalisations, there I was aged thirty-nine, down and out, a chronic alcoholic and drug addict whose time was fast running out. Indeed, I wished I were dead. Miraculously a way out of the abyss opened up, and so began my rehabilitation.'