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GCL Book Club: Jonathan Tepper, Shooting up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction

Author Jonathan Tepper
Author Jonathan Tepper

Jonathan Tepper was the child of Christian missionaries in Madrid at the height of the heroin epidemic there. It was the early 1980s, so many addicts had shared needles and were HIV positive. Tepper's parents began a drug rehab, called Betel, which is still running, to help the heroin addicts get clean. Many of those addicts, whom Tepper thought of as brothers and sisters, ended up dying of AIDS. His memoir is called Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Addiction.

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