The Weight of Air

David Poses’s memoir, The Weight of Air, captured my emotions from the very first page. His atmospheric storytelling made me feel as if I was fully immersed in his life and right beside him from the very beginning as he tried to get clean. My heart ached for him as he battled his depression and heroine use, and the way he described his feelings and processes of using and stopping are beyond words.

This was a book I could not put down. Even though David was telling a dark, difficult, and brutally honest story, his way with words and the heart behind them was so beautiful. After I turned the last page, I felt truly humbled and impacted by what I read. My eyes have been opened to so much more in the opioid pandemic and given me greater understanding.

I know there are so many out there dealing with their own battle, and I really believe that David’s story will offer hope to those still battling and fighting for their lives. Thank you David for sharing your story and giving others hope.

“When addiction is equated with moral failure and opioids are lumped in with recreational drugs, we invalidate the real cause of our national health emergency.”

Synopsis: While his wife and two-year-old daughter watched TV in the living room, David Poses was in the kitchen, measuring the distance from his index finger to his armpit. He needed to be sure he could pull the trigger with a shotgun barrel in his mouth. Twenty-six inches. Thirty-two years old. More than a decade in a double life fueled by depression and heroin.

In his groundbreaking memoir, The Weight of Air, David chronicles his struggle to overcome mental illness and addiction. By age nineteen, he’d been through medical detox, inpatient rehab, twelve-step programs, and a halfway house. He saw his drug use as a symptom of depression, but the experts insisted that addiction was the problem. Over the next thirteen years, he went from one relapse to the next, drowning in guilt, shame, and secrets, until he finally found an evidence-based treatment that not only saved his life, but helped him thrive.

With grit, humor, and brutal honesty, David’s story reveals that traditional recovery models actually increase stigma and the risk of overdose, relapse, and death. As depression and addiction rates skyrocket and overdose fatalities surge, The Weight of Air is a scathing indictment of our failed response to the opioid crisis—and proof that success is possible.