Hermosa Beach, California, in the mid-1960s. Sun, surf, and sand castles along The Strand to a soundtrack of “Fun, Fun, Fun.” But the hang-loose life of the locals was soon being drowned out—by a social storm able to turn even the most perfect wave into a brutal riptide. How do you go from planning vacations and evaluating investments to planning prison visits and evaluating defense pleas? How do you watch your surfer-champion sons turn into drug lords? Inmates? How do you watch your entire family die, one by one? Yet never stop fighting. What does it take to look in the mirror and search for the meaning of enabler? Or face that you’re sacrificing your own livelihood for Scotch? To ride a pounding wave of triumphs and tragedies, and paddle back for more? It takes a rare and special person: Karl McMillen. Karl is America’s hard work ethic. The guy Jefferson said will “determine never to be idle.” Babe Ruth’s “person who never gives up.” His story opens with a panorama of early 20th century California; a last-gasp look at the West before it was settled. When “entitlement” meant you were entitled to work your tail off. Karl’s success epitomizes that the cleanest hands in business are the ones that have smeared the most elbow grease. Karl worked and the system worked. He was said to have the “Golden Touch.” But systems break down. As America’s youth got swept into the deep murkiness of drugs, Karl was in over his head, too. He encountered something his work ethic and Golden Touch couldn’t conquer: Addiction. But he fought to apply his talents to this new subject. Gathering data and analyzing treatments, he uncovered so much. Triumphs and Tragedies explores the psychology of addiction through “voices from the street.” It probes the essence of enabling and the value of “rehabs”—uncommon concepts in the ‘60s. It demonstrates how a perfect life can be traded for pain; but how that pain can translate into a strong antidote against one of society’s greatest ills.
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