She covers why alcohol is so detrimental to a person’s well-being, and how your life and health can blossom without it. For more books about alcoholism and addiction, check out this list of 100 must-read books about addiction. Ann Dowsett Johnston combines in-depth research and her own story of recovery in this important book about the relationship between women and alcohol. Drink brings to light the increase in DUIs, “drunkorexia” , and other health problems among young women in the United States.

Their distorted perceptions and belief systems largely have them in their very predicament. Substance users and their families may be the least qualified people to read a self-help book and then go and try and fix a problem themselves. The substance best alcoholic memoirs user and their family will most likely read the material through a distorted lens. With that being said, many books are great reads, including Alcoholics Anonymous, which is not a self-help book but rather a textbook of insight and suggestion.

Best Quit Lit Books and Sobriety Memoirs to Inspire Your Recovery

” British writer Catherine Gray tells us, and the good news is that what happened next for her was pretty amazing. Allen’s powerful, uplifting tale was first published in 1978, and while the slang may belong to another era, the message is timeless. The road to recovery is different for everyone, but with a little courage and faith , it’s possible for many of us to walk it. Whether you want to better understand the mindset of addiction or find inspiration in how they got out of it, these memoirs are nothing short of inspiring. That bottle of merlot was all Kerry Cohen could think about as she worked through her day. She always completed whatever was on the to-do list but always with this reward on top of her mind.

This is a different memoir because it focuses not on the road to sobriety, but on what happens with your life now that you’ve done the thing that once seemed impossible. Baker is a former NBA all-star whose career was derailed by his substance use disorder. In his story, he convinces himself that he is a better player under the influence, but eventually lost everything to his SUD. In this dark but incredibly comedic memoir, Smith tells all about her story and the road she finally took to recover from her perpetual numbing. She’s just someone who uses alcohol to muster up the courage, and, well, survive life. This is just how it has always been since her introduction to Southern Comfort when she was fourteen. Can you think of other examples in politics, newspapers, business, or your everyday life that seem to illustrate the impact of the self-serving bias? Frey and his publisher, Nan Talese, were unable to effectively refute The Smoking Gun allegations. A curtain falling in the middle of the act, leaving minutes and sometimes hours in the dark. They’d simply see a woman on her way to somewhere else, with no idea her memory just snapped in half.

Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition

Any information published on this website or by this brand is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional. Today, she’s a lawyer and motivational speaker who wants to show others that change is possible. In one scene in the book, Brown describes losing her apartment and going on a four-day crack binge. Learn more about Tempest’s unique approach to alcohol recovery. When she looked around she couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t alone. In a relatable style, Lush explores the ongoing addiction crisis amongst middle-aged females. This is a darkly comic book about the slow road through recovery, really growing up, and being someone that gets back up after screwing up. He also addresses his experience of feeling out of place in the music industry as a rapper who also practices a Christian faith, feeling excluded at red carpet events due to discussing his faith in his lyrics.

When you read any Masters or Ph.D. level textbooks on counseling theories and strategies, you find strategies utilized in Alcoholics Anonymous. Looking back to the psychoanalytic theory developed by Sigmund Freud and collective unconscious developed by Carl Jung, there are similarities to the suggestions of Alcoholics Anonymous. As you read through all the other counseling strategies that came after, you will find equal similarities. The point is, the foundational message, vision, and solution of Alcoholics Anonymous cannot be completely avoided regardless of which method works for someone to achieve sobriety.

Not Drinking Tonight

Reading a book and taking no action will do nothing more than allow you to say you read the book. Books on drug and alcohol addiction do not make you better; you have to take action and find guidance from someone other than just yourself. If you read the book of Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous and did nothing more than that, chances are you wouldn’t Sober Home be any soberer than you are now; it is possible, yet highly unlikely. Knowledge may be power, but taking action is what brings change. Debut novel from Nico Walker who wrote it while incarcerated for bank robbery. The honest and accurate portrayal of addiction and withdrawal has led to it being called the “first great novel of the opioid epidemic”.

Some of the closest friendships are forged in the crucible of hard partying. This lyrical, dark, biting novel is about one of those friendships, between Tyler and Laura, roommates and codependent hot messes. They wonder throughout whether they’re overdoing it … and order another round anyway. When the cycle of druggy nights and hardcore hangovers starts getting to Laura, their bond must be reevaluated. The best audiobooks on happiness mine learnings from science, philosophy, and psychology to point the way toward a more joyful, carefree life. “Giving up” alcohol might sound daunting…but what are you actually giving up when you’re hungover on the sofa all day? Cutting out the booze can transform your life in unexpected ways…. Many of them, like Caroline Knapp, started in their early teens and began to use alcohol as “liquid armor”….

He showed me a path to follow, including opening a house of healing for other women. His teachings, spiritual principles, and a lot of work helped me achieve 32 years in recovery. When we aren’t posting here, we build programs to help people quit drinking. When we aren’t posting here, we build programs to help people quit drinking. That bottle of merlot was all Kerry Cohen could think about as she got through her day. She did all she had to do but always with this reward on top of her mind. This book is a positive tale where she narrates the year in which she went from a cancer diagnosis to her happiest and best self ever.

It’s raw; it’s honest, and it’s a beautiful story of redemption and recovery. This is a raw memoir that makes you feel like you’re there with the writer, through all her shame, all her hiding, and all her self-accusations of being a terrible mother because of her drinking. Her struggle is beautifully portrayed, and you also get to emerge with her on the other side once she regains her sobriety once more. Eventually, she goes through a series of 9-to-5 jobs that end with her living behind a Dumpster due to a descent into crack cocaine use. But in this gripping memoir, she turns it all around with the help of a family of eccentric fellow substance users and friends or strangers who come to her aid. This gripping tale is about the resilience of spirit combined with the worst of modern urban life. Cupcake survives thanks to a furious wit and an unyielding determination and you’ll want to read her inspiring tale. Recounting the progression from an idyllic childhood to a monstrous meth addiction, Amy Dresner explores her recovery journey in this insightful memoir. Although the details of our addiction and recovery stories may be different, the core of our experiences is often the same. This is the book for you if you’re looking for masterful prose and an important message.

• With this book she breaks her anonymity, describing the jarring moment of waking into trauma and victimhood, and the onerous emotional and legal battle that followed.
• Anne Lamott famously says, “You own everything that happened to you.
• Memoirs are nonfiction biographies written from personal knowledge.
• Many famous musicians struggled with various addictions, but many were also able to recover and went on to produce a lot of great music instead of falling victim to the stereotype.
• But in this gripping memoir, she turns it all around with the help of a family of eccentric fellow substance users and friends or strangers who come to her aid.

She thought the normal people who could drink casually were lucky. She wasn’t self-medicating and was able to truly feel her feelings and live honestly. We Are the Luckiest is a life-changing memoir about recovery—without any sugarcoating. She started sneaking sips from her parents’ wine glasses as a kid, and went through adolescence drinking more and more. By the time she was an adult in a big city, all she did was drink. Blackout is her poignant story of alcoholism and those many missing hours that disappeared when she had just enough to drink to wipe out her memory. Hepola gets through the darkest parts of her story with self-deprecating humor and a keen eye on what she was burying by drinking. More than a journey through addiction and recovery from it, this is a tale about how trauma shapes us, and how we can only free ourselves from its hold by facing it. It’s a testament to how one moment, completely out of our control, can drastically change our lives.

I almost wanted to snap it shut, but instead finished it in one day and have read it at least three more times since. Knapp so perfectly describes the emotional landscape of addiction, and as a literary study it’s as perfect a memoir as I’ve ever read. I often think about what it took to publish this when she did, in the 90’s, as a female and a journalist in Boston. It takes guts to admit that you have an addiction to drugs or alcohol . These twenty-six authors have shown incredible bravery and resilience in sharing their most painful experiences and deepest vulnerabilities in public as they recount their roads to recovery. Janelle Hanchett chronicles the story of embracing motherhood through the devastating separation from her children at the height of addiction. Her quest for sobriety includes rehabs and therapy — necessary steps to begin a journey into realizing and accepting an imperfect self within an imperfect life.

Her beloved habit of overdrinking and staying until bars closed, however, meant that her nights and the following mornings were also all about her regular blackouts. Takes a deep dive into the history of the recovery movement while also examining how race and class impact our understanding of who is a criminal and who is simply ill. She ultimately identifies how we all crave love and how that loneliness can shape who we are, addicted and not. Anyone who has ever suffered from panic and anxiety might understand the allure of alcohol to help cope. That siren song eventually led to broadcast journalist Elizabeth Vargas to admit her addiction on national television. By day, she’s a successful editor, but by night she’s a party girl who can’t sleep. In this tale of self-loathing and self-sabotage, readers can follow Marnell as she battles her inner demons and falls down further into despair — yet eventually making it through to the other side. A lot of recovery memoirs end when the writer gets sober, leading us to wonder, “What happened next?

Trying to strategize and find solutions with other family members affected by the addiction is not always the best course of action either and often results in ineffective outcomes. Well-meaning people in my life keep stressing to me that alcoholism is a disease, and that relapse is statistically a nearly-certain symptom. “You wouldn’t get mad at someone if they had cancer,” they say. Similar to Cherry, Ohio is also a devastating depiction of the aftermath of returning from war and getting swept up by the opioid epidemic and is set in Ohio. This novel is about four former high school classmates who return to a small fictional town in southeast Ohio, called New Canaan, one night in 2013. Each one has experienced hard times during their 20s and now wants to make things right. The book reads more like a set of four portraits of characters coming together in a town that has been ravaged by the recession, addiction, suicide, and hopelessness, all with their own forms of escape and return. The tension between on the wagon/off the wagon is often good fodder for literature. Early sobriety forces, like giving birth, a quick and complete break with a former life in order to make way for a new, sometimes ambiguously desired one.

I’m in Paris on a magazine assignment, which is exactly as great as it sounds. I eat dinner at a restaurant so fancy I have to keep resisting the urge to drop my fork just to see how fast someone will pick it up. I’m drinking cognac—the booze of kings and rap stars—and I love how the snifter sinks between the crooks of my fingers, amber liquid sloshing up the sides as I move it in a figure eight. An intervention is not about how to control the substance user; it is about how to let go of believing you can. A darkly comic, honest, and completely relatable inside look at high-functioning addiction in the world of corporate law-a sort of ‘Sex and the Psych Ward.’ It’s inspiring, informative, and impossible to put down. Through talking to opioid users, family members, dealers, doctors, judges, activists, emergency responders, and law enforcement, we get a much larger picture of the causes and effects.

I’ve wanted her to get sober for a long time, but the reasons have been a slow slide down the hierarchy of needs. I’ve always wanted her to be the person she is, to travel and explore and learn new things. I want her to feel good about herself at her core, to believe all of the wonderful things people constantly tell me about her. I want her to be secure financially and to know that she will always have what she needs to live.

One of the best addiction memoirs is Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking. While many know her as Princess Leia in the Star Wars franchise, her memoir explores her experiences as she grew up among Hollywood royalty while battling addiction and manic depression. Wishful Drinking is a brutally honest and light-hearted take on addiction and mental illness. This recovery story captures the anguish and doubt that accompany the choice to quit drinking. In those stories, the decision to get better often arrives like a bolt of lightning, but this is rarely the case. My own recovery from codependency and alcoholism, which I write about in my memoir Good Morning, Destroyer of Men’s Souls, has felt elusive, circuitous, and sometimes rather boring. Since I don’t love the word “journey”, I prefer to think of it as a kind of endurance art, the term performance artists give to work that requires long periods of hardship, solitude or pain. Here’s a celebrity memoir from famous actor and comedian Russell Brand that also offers helpful advice for recovery.