FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Losing a Life to Drug Overdoses

Fort Lauderdale, June 2006:  The list is monumental. They come from all walks of life, although we generally know only the famous ones. Actors, actresses, musicians, sports stars…from a Playboy bunny to a long-ago evangelist. There are such names as Bela Lugosi, John Belushi, Len Bias, Lenny Bruce, Montgomery Clift, Dorothy Dandridge, Brian Epstein, Aimee Semple McPherson, Marilyn Monroe, Jim Morrison, Christopher Penn, River Phoenix, Chris Farley, W.C. Fields, Jerry Garcia, Judy Garland, Sonny Liston, Bobby Hatfield, Margaux Hemingway, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and, of course, Elvis, in the melancholy  list. In her book, Eric My Son…Lost to Drugs, Joanne Baker has followed her son’s battle in life to overcome his addiction and the ultimate, horrifying conclusion.

This is the true story about a mother's losing battle with her drug-addicted son, and their many ups and downs through life.  His story begins as a hyperactive child and progresses to a troubled, drug-addicted teenager. The book describes the forces that drove him to take drugs.  It talks about society, his genetic inheritance, and his parents’ failure.  Eric was raised like a child in the fifties, his parents not realizing how dangerous the world had become by the eighties.  Eric gave up drugs and alcohol for a year at a time, and everyone thought he would be fine.  However, the temptation would never go away!  His poor judgment, due to being slightly slow, always added to his problems.  His family always gave him more credit than they should have.  Perhaps it is hard for parents to face reality.  They always want to believe their children are doing fine.  His parents encouraged Eric to make his own decisions, but this led to many frightening situations; still no one thought his life would end the way it did.  They always thought that someday he would find himself.

This is a book that is very hard to put down as it leads us through Eric's wild, sad and funny adventures.  He spent his last years in West Palm Beach after growing up in New York, Tokyo and Boston. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joanne Baker has been married for forty-six years and has had three children. An artist, who has a Fine Arts degree from Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, she paints landscapes, people, animals, and flowers in vivid colors, and has won many awards over the years.  This is the only book Joanne has ever written, but she was driven to write it after her oldest son, Eric, died of a drug overdose at the age of thirty-four.