Drugs and alcohol play a major role in kids" life in the present and even in the past. It has this effect of them that causes them to feel much more mature and in control of their own life. Most kids abuse drugs and alcohol as a way to rebel against their parents or anyone with authority, yet some abuse drugs and alcohol as a way to escape to the life that they live. If a kid were to grow up wondering where their next meal was going to come from, why their parents leave in the middle of the night to go to their second job just to make ends meet, or why they don't have a television like the other kids in their school then they would be tempted more than others to abuse drugs and alcohol in order to escape this horrible and cruddy life that they live. These kids do not always have to live poor and cruddy lives; some may even be living the life of luxury. However, Roberta Rohbeson, the main character in the novel Cruddy, lives a cruddy life similar to the one I just explained. Roberta grew in a small place down the street from the dump in a place full of poverty. The author of Cruddy, Lynda Barry, thoroughly portrays this life that Roberta live very distinctly throughout the entire novel. .
Roberta abuses drugs and alcohol to escape from this horrible nightmare that she is living. Barry states, "Once upon a cruddy time in on a cruddy street on the side of a cruddy hill in the cruddiest part of a crudded-out town in a cruddy state, country, world, solar system, universe. Roberta was writing the cruddy book of her cruddy life and the name of the book was called Cruddy" (3). Neither one of her parents were even worth claiming because they both had serious mental issues. Her mother was very violent women even to the point where she would cause serious injuries to her own children. When Roberta Rohbeson was a younger her own mother hit her in the face with the receiver of the telephone.
