Chicago area author reflects on healing from shadows of generational addiction in new memoir

A west suburban Geneva author is addressing inherited pain, addiction, and survival, while on a mission to help others with similar experiences.

Keith Burton says his father's alcoholism was the shadow over everything in his life. While he survived his father's addiction and violence, he would later watch addiction nearly destroy his son Jarrett.

"Very often, even though my dad has been gone for many years, those shadows remain for me. When an alcoholic is gone, they're the feelings that you have when you're asked to grow up, younger than you expected to," Keith said.

Keith's story starts during his childhood. He said he was left terrified by the violence between his parents.

His father, Howard Burton, was a car salesman and his stay-at-home mother, Betty Burton, would have constant verbal and physical confrontations that were fueled by his father's drinking.

"At times, awakened at two and three in the morning when your parents are arguing after a very difficult night and then after getting up to care for both of them, then getting up and preparing yourself to go to school the next morning," Keith said.

As the Geneva-based author writes in his new book, "Shadows of Sobriety," those painful memories are the shadows that still exist for him today.

"Hurt people can be healed by their stories and I wrote this book for that reason, to give myself a voice for the things I'd held on to for so many years but also to give a voice to other people who have similar stories to mine," Keith said.

He says he and his siblings never spoke about the violence they saw and heard at home. Neither did anyone in his family. He had a successful career, traveling the world performing corporate communications, with his turbulent childhood having no impact.

However, the signs of his unacknowledged past started to appear. After suffering panic attacks, Keith started seeing a psychologist specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

"He was able to help me understand how what I had experienced in my life growing up was really the genesis of all of the issues that I had that I had repressed for so long," Keith said.

His healing began with writing—putting decades of bottled-up feelings on paper.

Keith has given talks around the country, going to bookstores and churches, using his pain to empower others. 

Part of his message of hope and healing is his son Jarrett's story of a 20-year battle with addiction starting with alcohol at 18, then oxycontin after an injury, and finally heroin.

"Before too long, I found myself kind of living on the streets of Chicago, so you want to talk about a bottom. That's hitting very, very low bottom," Jarrett said.

His turning point came while riding a CTA train—his only form of daily shelter—and seeing runners heading to the Chicago marathon.

"There was something so poetic about these people who not only knew how to live life, they were doing things like running a marathon on a weekend," Jarrett said. "It was only a couple of days later when I finally made the decision to make a change."

After bearing the family's generational cross of addiction, Jarrett is now eight years sober. The former WGN Radio afternoon drive producer is now a certified recovery support specialist at Serenity House Counseling Services in Addison, where he has helped hundreds of people. It's the same rehabilitation center in suburban addison, that helped him battle and beat his addiction.

"The struggles I went through, if I was able to save one person, to me, everything is worth it," Jarrett said.

Jarrett is also a two-time cancer survivor. He leads a Narcan expansion program at Serenity House so the overdose reversal drug can be found at locations like libraries and police stations throughout DuPage County. 

For Keith, what's next? Writing a book about leadership.