Joseph W. Naus was living the American Dream. He'd survived a brutal childhood, graduated from Pepperdine Law School, and become a successful attorney. Then one night, his American Dream-life became a nightmare when his sex and alcohol addictions collided and exploded.
"On Tuesday, I was a respected civil trial lawyer making six-figures. On Wednesday, I woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed charged with attempted murder...and then it got worse."
Straight Pepper Diet is a book about surviving one's own wreckage. It's harrowing, sometimes hilarious, and surprisingly hope-filled.
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Joseph Naus survived the catastrophic night that destroyed his legal career and landed him in handcuffs—the story he told in his acclaimed memoir Straight Pepper Diet. The Palsgraf Revelation picks up where that story left off. Joseph survived the blast, but now he must learn to live with the fallout—or risk becoming nothing more than a cautionary tale.
Joseph's an active 12-Stepper, sober and free of sex-addiction for two years, but he’s got big problems. A disbarred lawyer, a two-strike felon, and permanently labeled a threat to society, he’s seemingly unemployable and un-dateable. He’s smoking a pack a day and can’t quit; and, he’s running out of money, speeding down the freeway to homelessness, unable to locate the offramp to “The Road of Happy Destiny.”
The Palsgraf Revelation is more than an addiction and recovery memoir. It’s a documentation of American society leading up to and during the Great Recession. It’s a love story, a forgiveness story, a story of struggling to make a living, a story of hitting bottom in recovery and reluctantly and ever-critically seeking “outside help". The Palsgraf Revelation is a story of acceptance and spiritual truth that reveals—in Joseph’s engaging style—the remedy for any ruined life.
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“A searing, uninhibited account of an addict’s long and winding road to recovery. ... Naus’ tone is affable, enthusiastic, and conversational, and his narrative flows like a series of chats over coffee with a good friend whose life has hit the skids. Also appealing are his descriptions of Southern California, where the Santa Monica weather is considered “God-kissed meteorological perfection.” ...”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Joseph’s follow-up memoir, The Palsgraf Revelation, is as open, honest and raw as his first. His prose skillfully conjures the addict mind. An incredible read.”
— Rich Roll, host of Rich Roll Podcast and Author of Finding Ultra
“Welcome to the most fascinating and truthful memoir of the life IN recovery. Beautifully written, painfully vulnerable and unabashedly realistic. A must must must read.”
— Amy Dresner, Author of My Fair Junkie
“If you’ve ever been knocked down so hard by life you could not fathom how to get up, The Palsgraf Revelation gives you an unflinching glimpse of what it takes. There are few writers who capture what it means to live and die and somehow live again in Los Angeles as viscerally and cerebrally as Naus. He paints with words and breaks your heart in the process.”
— Nick Guthe, Filmmaker
“Joseph Naus has the rare ability to crack your heart open like an egg with his deeply evocative work. To read The Palsgraf Revelation is to be submerged in the tender, painstaking beauty of what it takes to climb from the darkest chasm of an addiction bottom to find a spiritually meaningful life.”
— Heidi Ferrer, GirltoMom.com
Joseph W. Naus was born in 1971. He graduated from Pepperdine Law and passed the Bar in 1997. As related in his harrowing yet hopeful memoir, Straight Pepper Diet, Joseph was raised by his mom, a heroin addict turned shut-in depressive, amidst crime and poverty. At age 32, Joseph’s American Dream life became a nightmare when his addictions to sex, alcohol, and cigarettes collided and exploded. “On Tuesday, I was a respected civil trial lawyer making six figures. On Wednesday, I woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed charged with attempted murder … and then it got worse.” Spoiler alert: Despite the odds, Joseph is alive and well. He lives in Highland Park in Los Angeles with his wife, Theresa, and their cat, Bogey, and has released his follow-up memoir The Palsgraf Revelation.