Book excerpt: "'As I walked up the giant stairs, the hallway seemed to get brighter and brighter. I emerged onto the balcony. The sunlight was so blinding to my eyes that had been locked closed from insanity and pain or the weight of the Seroquel that I did not take in the whole scene at first. I looked at the sky. It was blue with small hints of grey, and the breeze was still while the clouds were large and puffy. The sky was calm and peaceful and gorgeous. My eyes squinted from brightness and slight nausea; I looked down from the second floor of the raised old house and realized the streets had morphed into rivers. I looked on with both disbelief and amazement.' As the whispers of Hurricane Katrina swirled through New Orleans, I did not even consider evacuating. The reason is simple. I did not have enough heroin to make it very far out of the city, without facing the impending doom of dope sickness. This is my story of the storm of the century. Follow me, sloshing through the storm's flood waters, searching for my next fix, with the slow realization that things will never be the same again. Eliza Player spent nearly ten years living in New Orleans, soaking up all the dirt and grime that the streets and her addiction had to offer, until Hurricane Katrina threatened that way of life forever. Since she came to her recovery, she graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, became a proud mother and wife, and has been writing about her past experiences in hopes to shed some light into places some feel are too dark."--P. [4] of cover.