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Overview
As the mother of twin heroin addicts, Cullen felt desperate to save her sons. For over a decade, she lived with the lucid horror that at any moment she might receive the kind of news from which a parent never recovers.
In Spite of Heroin is an intimate and unflinching portrayal of a mother’s devastation, trust, and resolve. Readers will be captivated by Cullen’s candid, lyrical voice and gripped by the relentless emotional core of her story. Eminently readable, it is a stark and shocking account of how she endured, coped, and ultimately emerged from the darkness.
Like a gracious Midwestern hostess, Cullen invites readers into her home, her heart, her mind—and the unimaginable reality she faced. With honesty and eloquence, she reveals the paradox that defined her inner world: terror intertwined with hope.
This powerful journey is thoughtfully woven with introspection. Cullen balances chaos with reflections on destiny, intuition, nature’s wisdom, and the dual experience of being both human and soul. Her emotional fortitude will resonate not only with addicts and those who love them, but with anyone striving to endure and transcend prolonged despair.
Standing at the crossroads of hopelessness and surrender, Cullen was forced to choose her path. In Spite of Heroin traces her journey to that fateful intersection and the strength, wisdom, and trust that shaped her decisions. Addiction knows no boundaries. This mother’s courageous story offers readers around the world inspiration, solace, and hope.
About The Book
An idyllic upbringing, unconditional love, and the serenity of Heartland USA were not enough to shield this close-knit family from heroin. In her moving, ultimately hopeful narrative of struggle and redemption, Cullen writes unsparingly of how she survived the shock of learning that her beautiful, identical twin sons had become heroin addicts and the terror that unfolded as a result.
Cullen and her husband returned to North Dakota when their twins were ten months old to give them the same benefits she had as a child. But steadfast family values and the manageable pace of North Dakota did not work their charm this time around. By the time the boys were twenty, they were drug dealers, heroin addicts, and felons.
This family’s catastrophic status quo included overdoses, attempted suicide, court-mandated stays at rehab centers, and countless cycles of incarceration, including a federal indictment, none of which had been anywhere near Cullen’s maternal radar. She had lived her entire adult life believing ‘what you think about, you bring about.’ Despite her innate optimism, she wondered… if I wasn’t thinking about it, how’d I bring it about?
This is a cautionary tale that delivers a blunt impact of reality to any parent who believes ‘this can’t happen to our family’. It portrays a courageous mother and her attempts to save her sons from wasted lives and tragic drug-related deaths.
In Spite of Heroin reveals a parent’s nightmare and the struggle of a lifetime. Eminently readable, In Spite of Heroin is a shocking true story that readers will sacrifice sleep to finish.