Too Much to Dream

October 24, 2011
"How could an 18-year-old in his parents' suburban basement, tripping on acid and listening to Pink Floyd, expect to commune with the gods, when he didn't even know their names?" Bebergal (The Faith Between Us) provides a first-hand account of the life of a young addict, as processed through the mature, reasoned voice of sobriety. As he searched for a mystical experience, he tried it allâimaginary worlds, occultism, philosophy, religious traditions, and various illegal substancesâbut never found the answer. Told with compassion and understanding for his young self as well as his unsuspecting parents, this memoir traces his path from high school dropout to mature family man, through marijuana, acid, cocaine and alcohol with a dose of the I-Ching, Tarot, and Jewish traditions. The book may interest those in addiction counseling or who are attempting to get clean themselves, as his analysis of addictive behavior provides material for thought and discussion. In the end, Bebergal offers hope that his addictive behavior can rest, and that he's discovered the bliss of the everyday.

Starred review from October 15, 2011
Bebergal's first major work, The Faith Between Us (2007), cowritten with Scott Korb, debated the virtues of faith and friendship while probing the universal longing for God. Here, Bebergal takes that exploration a step further in a deeply personal memoir of addiction that also questions how much the human appetite for mind-altering substances can be attributed to the equally human yearning for spiritual insight. Bebergal's initiation into the world of drugs officially began, he surmises, when he turned 13 in suburban Massachusetts during the late 1970s and discovered the popular role-playing game, Dungeons and Dragons. From there it was short leap into psychedelic rock, New Age mysticism, a little acid, lots of weed, and too much Castaneda. At 21, Bebergal found himself dealing with multiple drug dependencies. In between riffs on hippie generation music, comics, and science fiction, Bebergal surveys the multiple influences and mixed spiritual messages underpinning modern society's predilection for consciousness-changing substances and concludes that the best place to start looking for mystical knowledge is on solid, sober ground. Bebergal's beautifully nuanced prose and depths of psychological insight make this one of the best memoirs of the new decade, one that also offers a uniquely valuable perspective on addiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)