Don't Count Me Out: A Baltimore Dope Fiend's Miraculous Recovery (The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work)

"From the first time I met Rafael on The Wire, we've always had in depth conversations. Whether about our families or work, it always left me smiling. Like his anthology Hometown Boy, where Alvarez recounts stories of those who call Baltimore home, Don't Count Me Out, is filled with affliction and triumph. The Bruce White Story takes you along the road to redemption."

"For those struggling with addiction?and for their loved ones?the story of Bruce White should bring terror, because it shows just how far a person can fall, and hope, because he came back. Rafael Alvarez gives us a relentlessly honest look at the disease that is ravaging so many American communities."

"No writer knows this territory better than Rafael Alvarez, and he tell's Bruce White's harrowing story with a fresh, urgent candor; a deep exploration of a wayward soul who somehow found his way to redemption."

"Don't Count Me Out is the product of the ideal pairing of author and subject. Rafael Alvarez is a veteran scribe with a sympathetic ear, a keen eye for expository detail, and a veteran reporter's faith in the power of verifiable fact. Bruce White is a man whose life has been so full of violence, duplicity, and drama that, in the hands of another writer, his story might read like an outlandish bit of urban myth. Both are hometown boys?Baltimore through and through?and the alchemy created by the combination of their contrasting histories and common geography has produced a text of concise power and laudable empathy.  "

"Bruce White was raised with opportunities, comfort and resources in Baltimore. Like many boys and girls in the rebellious Sixties and Seventies, White and his friends watch their older brothers party. They want to get high, too, and they do. But for Bruce White, sexual abuse, brutal insecurity and a hunger to gain status with his peers feeds the relentless choice to keep upping the drug load. Cranking and sedating himself becomes his purpose. The superficial idyll of his boyhood morphs fast into violent criminal adult behavior with horrible costs. White understands his strength is that he just doesn't care and will confront anything on the streets or in the jail-yard to get what he needs. Then, in middle age, what he needs changes. Rafael Alvarez writes: "Dope no longer provided escape from the skin in which he'd been born." Bruce White has been wounded by SWAT bullets and prison razors, but on his journey, as captured by Alvarez, we watch him step from the haze of the addicted and search for his true life. "

Don't Count Me Out chronicles the life of Bruce White from the beginning of his drug use in elementary school through criminal acts fueled by his need for drugs, to his miraculous recovery three decades later and involvement in the treatment of addicts, where he is now a leader in the rehabilitation field.

Rafael Alvarez's recounting of White's journey should inspire those dealing with the fallout of addiction. Alvarez, a journalist and screenwriter, allows the reader to get inside the head of an addict who was stealing alcohol from his parents at the age of nine, selling drugs and tripping on LSD and PCP by the time he hit seventh grade, and hooked on morphine before he turned fifteen. "Bruce White? I thought he was dead?" is a response encountered in many of the interviews Alvarez conducted.

Don't Count Me Out shines a spotlight on an improbable and stunning miracle. Though this is just one person's story, the contributing factors of early sexual assault, the role of permissive preoccupied parents, and the need for peer approval, among others, will resonate with many as the opioid crisis continues to haunt us.

"Bruce White was raised with opportunities, comfort and resources in Baltimore. Like many boys and girls in the rebellious Sixties and Seventies, White and his friends watch their older brothers party. They want to get high, too, and they do. But for Bruce White, sexual abuse, brutal insecurity and a hunger to gain status with his peers feeds the relentless choice to keep upping the drug load. Cranking and sedating himself becomes his purpose. The superficial idyll of his boyhood morphs fast into violent criminal adult behavior with horrible costs. White understands his strength is that he just doesn't care and will confront anything on the streets or in the jail-yard to get what he needs. Then, in middle age, what he needs changes. Rafael Alvarez writes: "Dope no longer provided escape from the skin in which he'd been born." Bruce White has been wounded by SWAT bullets and prison razors, but on his journey, as captured by Alvarez, we watch him step from the haze of the addicted and search for his true life. "

Rafael Alvarez is a former City Desk reporter for the Baltimore Sun and former writer for the HBO drama, The Wire. He is the author of many books of fiction and nonfiction.