Sex, drugs and the Ramones: CNN’s Camerota ties up ‘loose ends’ from high school

Wandering the former site of New York's famed CBGB nightclub, pointing to familiar names on band posters spread amid carefully preserved graffiti, is like being transported to a life that CNN's Alisyn Camerota has long since left behind. The Jersey girl has written “Combat Love,” a memoir that focuses on sex, substance abuse, effective abandonment by her parents and even brief homelessness all before she graduated high school, and the family she found with followers of a local band, Shrapnel, to help cope. Camerota, who poses for a picture under a street sign marking “Joey Ramone Way” outside the old club, even details a cringe-worthy backstage encounter with the punk pioneers.