We Got This, Kids - Interview with Authors

WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY)

Andy Marsjanik, a Potsdam resident took his own life in 2019, which was not only tragic, but baffling to those close to him, who had witnessed the tremendous progress he had made with sobriety and recovery.

Perhaps most affected by Andy’s suicide, his sister Amy was faced not only with a terrible loss, but with an unfinished manuscript Andy was working on. We Got This Kids, was a live unfiltered journal on being an alcoholic and the long recovery process. Andy had given Amy the manuscript only a month before he passed.

Amy knew she had to get Andy’s work out there, for him, for her, and for everyone suffering from depression.

That’s how Jeff Deck got involved. Amy was looking for an experienced writer and editor, who would feel passionately about the project, and she found one.

I talked with them recently to learn more about this remarkable journey. Watch the interview above.

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You can buy the book here:

If you still aren’t convinced, check out these great recommendations.

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Dr. Carl Hindy, Clinical Psychologist:

This will be a very engaging and helpful book for many of my psychotherapy clients I think this book will be very useful for my therapy clients as well as for students and grad students in mental health fields. I say that because it’s the absolute opposite of the dry case studies and methods books that prevail. It’s the diary of the insights of a person wrestling with depression and addiction. A warm, articulate, humorous, but at times frustrating, obsessional, defenseless and sad diary. It would be great to have clients read, highlight and discuss the parts with which they most identify, and talk about their own struggles and efforts to cope. It could be used to help clients with cognitive-behavioral approaches as well as psychodynamic approaches. Andy’s incredible openness and spirited jousting with his own thoughts and emotions probably will help many others open-up, share and explore. All that aside, it’s a hard book to put down!

Sent from my iPhone

· From a stranger who reached out on social media: Amy tells her brother’s truth about alcoholism and depression through his words & others that knew him share their walk with Andy. This book is as real and raw as it gets lending hope to our future generations that if you could just have a glimpse of tomorrow today might not seems so bleak. For anyone that has lost a loved one to suicide, to anyone who loves an alcoholic or someone struggling with mental health, for those struggling themselves, for those who have lost hope…. This read is for you

From a Professor of Modern Language and Literatures:

I thought I would read We Got This, Kids in a few days but once I started, I could not stop. It’s breathtaking. It’s more than a book — it’s like traveling through time and space, witnessing Andy’s life, but also the lives of all the others intimately involved in his. Andy’s book is testimony to one man’s struggle, a dramatic tour de force.

And this, from Andy (in a message to me) — powerful:

“I’d like to tell the truth about alcoholism. I’ve never really seen it portrayed, with the gloves off, the way I’ve lived it my whole adult life. I can tell you why I drink when I know it’s simply wrong. I can tell you how I feel when the ramifications become real. Never really seen anyone go to the well with guns blazing in terms of the truth. I might.”

—Dr. Katarzyna Jerzak

Associate Research Scholar

Modern Languages and Literatures

Johns Hopkins University”

From one of Andy’s dear friends (also from Norwood-Norfolk):

“I see now that depression and lies are interwoven in pernicious Gordian knots that can hang a good man. I find myself watching for the signs now. In my family, in my friends, in my clergy, in my grocer, in strangers on trains. In myself. And I know we must counter the lies and assure those in pain that supernatural Joy can be found in gratitude, humility, friendship, and service. And, maybe more than anything else, confident self-acceptance. If Andy had only known. We miss him.

—Thad Hunkins

Friends with Andy since ninth-grade English with Mr. Graham”

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