Real world recovery: in a confessional new book, gay Real World alum Chris Beckman puts the spotlight on a new generation fighting addiction.(Clean: A New Generation in Recovery Speaks Out)(Cover Story)(Biography)

Publication: The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine)

Publication Date: 27-SEP-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Liberation Publications, Inc.

"If I'd started using drugs like crystal meth in high school," says Chris Beckman, "I don't know if I would have graduated. Or lived."

Beckman had been in recovery from alcoholism and drug abuse for just a year when he joined the cast of MTV's The Real World in its 2002 Chicago season, thereby becoming most Americans' first real image of a young gay man overcoming addiction. He calls those months of fishbowl living his "halfway house": "Everything seemed to happen for a reason. Talking to people--it became my life."

Three years later he lives on New York's Long Island, focusing on his painting and touring high schools and colleges to talk about addiction and recovery. As part of that work he wrote the just--published Clean:...

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