Closer to Taxi Driver than Beautiful Boy
“Addict’s Way is one of those books… Right from the start, we’re introduced to Peter Panelli at one of the lowest points in his life—cooking crack in an alley near Dodger Stadium while his wife Cheryl is giving birth. It’s a shocking scene …” ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Amazon Reviewer
This is the true story of Stephen Liosi’s alter-ego, Peter Panelli—the disbarred lawyer and law professor who ended up homeless and cooking crack in an alley near Dodger Stadium while his wife gave birth.
If you want a clean, uplifting recovery story, look somewhere else. This is a brawl. It’s the blood, the self-loathing, and the dark, biting laughs that come when a man finally sees the beautiful mess he made.
ADDICT’S WAY
The core hook of Addict’s Way is highly unique: A former law professor finds himself living in a crack house—not as a user, but as a man drowning in the wreckage of a compulsive gambling habit, keeping company by naming the crack house cockroaches after his family. That’s the raw, surreal core of Addict’s Way.
It’s an uncompromising anti-memoir following a disbarred attorney spiraling through the dark underbelly of addiction, street survival, and the deletion from a few million-dollar family trust by a malignant-narcissist sister.
4.7 ⭐ Global Rating / Get Your Copy Now 👉 Addict’s Way
The Verdict from the Underbelly
“As mad as a box of frogs.” — Anonymous
“Like Anthony Bourdain, Liosi is a breathtaking storyteller.” — Laura LeVan
“This book reads like a movie.” — Rob Swigart, novelist
“Bukowski lives!” — Robert Turada
This is Liosi.
Addict’s Way has been compared to The Basketball Diaries. And Stephen Liosi has been widely compared to greats like Bukowski, Selby Jr., and Denis Johnson. “The truth always derails,” Liosi says.
Before launching his literary career, Stephen Liosi worked within the rigid, high-stakes world of the California legal system as an attorney and law professor. Today, he channels that raw insider knowledge, along with personal experiences of homelessness, traumatic brain injury survival, and gambling addiction, into a distinct brand of counter-culture literature.
P.S. Yes, I was a personal acquaintance of “Hank” Bukowski at the Hollywood Park Racetrack in the 1980s. The voice is real.
Liosi 