Substance Abuse In Stephen King's On Writing

Whether it is a girl covered in pig’s blood, a women handcuffed next to her husband’s dead body, or a clown that comes every 27 years to eat children, there is always some sort of dark sinister aspect accompanying Stephen King’s writing. It has been speculated that King writes to represent his own demons and fears, meanwhile others argue that it is due to his poor upbringing. In his memoir On Writing he tells readers it is a mix of both. It is also in this memoir that he admits to numerous drinking and drug problems. It is this diagnosis that I will focus on in this case analysis. In part with fighting his own demons and a combination of his poor upbringing, Stephen king spent years struggling with alcohol and drug abuse. It is even at times

His father left the house when King was 2 years old and never returned. This left his mother to raise him and his two brothers on her own. Once it was just his mother and his brothers, things did not ease up for King. His mother worked numerous jobs to try and support her kids, and this lead to king and his siblings being bounced around from home to home. It was then that he lived with his aunt and uncle who also had substance abuse problems. Despite the little knowledge on his biological father, King was exposed to the presence of such substance abuse in his home environment, it is this that attributes to his biological factors that put him at risk for future substance abuse (Hooley, Butcher, Nock, & Mineka,

He tells of the animosity towards his father for walking out and leaving them with his mother. He also tells of the struggle he had with his mother because she was always gone and forced them to live on and off with different family members (King, 2000). This family discord and the lack of support he felt from his friends and family show that again King used substances to cope with life’s