An addict pulled back from the brink

Princeton High School graduate’s memoir relates a battle with meth

By: Jake Uitti
   It begins with a chase scene: An 18-year-old youth running near the Princeton Shopping Center with police officers in hot pursuit. Police overtake him and find that he is carrying a bag of marijuana and paper slips of acid.
   A Princeton High School senior, he is arrested and by virtue of a court agreement sent to a rehabilitation center in Riverside, Calif. after graduation. He goes through withdrawal, gets clean, returns to the outside world, only to fall prey to methamphetamine, known as crystal meth.
   The young man is James Salant, now 22 and living in West Windsor.
   He tells his story of drug addiction, rehabilitation, relapse and redemption in a book, "Leaving Dirty Jersey: A Crystal Meth Memoir," which will be published by Simon & Schuster in May.
   For Mr. Salant, writing came before drug addiction but foreshadowed it.
   "As an adolescent, I assumed that all my experiences were interesting, so I would write every once in a while, especially about the drug stuff, which I thought was the coolest thing in the world," he said. "People encouraged me, but I never wrote seriously in high school."
   After leaving rehab, Mr. Salant stayed in California where he was introduced to the drug crystal meth. For the next year, he spent thousands of dollars on his new addiction, living in one seedy apartment after another. His memoir describes that life — the late nights, the garbage-filled rooms where he slept, the relationships he formed with other users and the difficult telephone conversations with his parents, whom he kept less than informed about his life and decisions.
   Ultimately, Mr. Salant said, "I got out of that life. I’m clean now."
   That took another six months in another rehabilitation center. Upon getting out, Mr. Salant immediately began writing about his experiences with crystal meth while in California. He wrote the stories from different angles and through different voices and then began discussing the writing and the potential for a book with his uncle, a former editor at Doubleday Publishing.
   It was at a party with his uncle where Mr. Salant met an agent, who asked him to write a proposal for his memoir, which was later sent to Simon & Schuster.
   Writing a memoir — especially one with such personal, wrenching details — can be difficult and was especially so for Mr. Salant as he recounted those days in California and the experiences his family had not heard about.
   "My family was great," he said. "They were gracious the whole time. It was hard getting a lot of this stuff on paper — family less so than the gritty California stuff — but through writing I found my moral positions on it."
   The book, reminiscent of William Burroughs’ "Junkie," took eight months to write, Mr. Salant said. He credits the deadline set by Simon & Schuster with helping him to get through the process.
   The last chapter turned out to be one of the first episodes he had written about.
   "I owed this guy some money in Riverside," he said. "I just started from there. I sort of assumed it would be a chapter in a book."
   Mr. Salant said he still keeps in touch with one of the people he met during his year in California. Her name is Wendy.
   "She went to prison, but she’s out now and as far as I know she’s clean," he said.
   Mr. Salant said he plans to continue writing, trying his hand at fiction, perhaps in a novel.