She educates the reader on how to best stop engaging in enabling behavior, in order to truly begin helping Halfway house a loved one find the road to recovery. In the literature world, you can find books about addiction and recovery in a genre known as “quit lit.” Quit lit is full of authors sharing their personal experiences and resources to help others who are where they’ve been. Karr arrived with a unique literary voice that combined rich Texan and burst of lyricism.

Hemingway’s Books and Records

In Tweak, Sheff paints a disturbingly honest portrait of addiction. Methamphetamine is a highly destructive drug, and he does not mince words when conveying the ruination that it brought to his life. His raw and graphic accounts of youthful experimentation with drugs and alcohol segues quickly into an out of control addiction. Sheff’s ability to convey the pain and loneliness that both causes and fuels addiction inspires simultaneous sympathy and fury within the reader. His descriptions perfectly capture the out of control life of a youth growing up with addiction, yet his story ultimately yields hope for the future. Published by Alcoholics Anonymous, this work does not offer advice on how to get sober; instead, it offers information on how to maintain sobriety on a day-to-day basis.

Told in the present tense (another rarity in autobiography), the result is a stunningly immersive and intimate story. We seem to experience Ditlevsen’s life with her, moment by vivid moment. Meanwhile successful writing always surprises and challenges us, perhaps by defying the conventions of the form to which it belongs or simply by refreshing them in some way. When she was drunk, writer and editor Hepola was a creative force. But she was also reckless, often finding herself soberly apologizing for things she didn’t remember doing, waking up next to men she didn’t remember meeting and caring for bruises she didn’t remember getting. Subtitled “Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget,” Hepola’s debut memoir is a vulnerable story about refocusing her attention from finding her next drink to learning how to love herself without liquid enhancements.

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With unflinching honesty, Walls shares the challenges and moments of love and tenderness that characterized her unconventional childhood. The Glass Castle is a compelling and thought-provoking read that offers a raw and unfiltered portrayal of the impact of alcoholism on a family, making it a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the complexities of this issue. Not just another celebrity memoir, Fisher’s book strikes the ideal balance between gossip-y entertainment and razor-sharp commentary. The Recovering’s insistence on the need for a different sort of addiction story is a tad unfair. Books diverging from the genre’s hallmarks are already easy to find. Sarah Hepola’s Blackout, while adhering to many narrative beats, also includes lengthy reporting about the science of blackouts.

A Childhood That Defies Gravity

The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober by Catherine Gray is a refreshing and insightful book on sobriety. This memoir chronicles Gray’s personal journey from struggling with alcohol addiction to finding unexpected joy in a sober lifestyle. Through candid and humorous storytelling, she shares the challenges and triumphs of navigating social situations, dating, and self-discovery without alcohol.

Incredible Recovery and Sobriety Memoirs I Want Everyone to Read

The books you choose can help you gain a new perspective on your own struggles or better understand what the people you care about are going through. Functioning and fun-loving, this author’s love for wine hardly seems like a problem until her attempt to cut back proves much more challenging than she had imagined. She begins to share her attempts to sober up anonymously online and ends up finding support, community, and the strength to battle her addiction in the most unlikely of places. Joseph Naus beats the odds by overcoming a difficult childhood and becoming a successful civil trial lawyer. Still, his insatiable desire for alcohol and sex upends his entire life on one fateful night.

We All Fall Down: Living with Addiction

Most are forgettable and forgotten, but some accomplished authors—like Caroline Knapp and Sarah Hepola—have created very good books by bringing real skill to the standard formula. The Easy Way to Control Alcohol by Allen Carr is a revolutionary book about alcoholics that challenges traditional methods of dealing with alcohol addiction. Carr’s approach is refreshing and effective as he debunks common misconceptions about alcohol and its control. Through his unique perspective, he encourages readers to reevaluate their relationship with alcohol and provides practical advice on overcoming addiction. The book about alcoholics is written in a conversational and engaging style, making it accessible to anyone seeking a new approach to regaining control over their drinking habits.

But the challenge is particularly acute when the story is about a life that, as the reader well knows, has simply gone on and on beyond the final page. Life doesn’t provide moments of satisfying narrative resolution. How do you craft an ending that makes narrative sense but which feels complex and inconclusive in the way life so often is?

• In addition to personal stories, many of these books delve deep into the personal and societal psychology of drinking and drug use.
• I am, probably, by way of my history, more attuned to picking up on it than others.
• I will say that she is very funny and entertaining at times, but her “poetic” prose has the affect of distancing me the author rather than making me feel more connected to her story.
• To vote on books not in the list or books you couldn’t find in the list, you can click on the tab add books to this list and then choose from your books, or simply search.
• Jerry Stahl was a writer with significant and successful screenwriting credits — Dr. Caligari, Twin Peaks, Moonlighting, and more.

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. With a reputation for hilarious honesty, as read in previous memoirs detailing her struggles with everything from mental illness to single life, Bryony Gordon is true to form in this detailed account of her alcohol-fueled downward spiral. Bryony puts her family, career and future at risk before a stint in rehab, loads of AA meetings and self-discovery help her to become a mother, partner and person she can be proud of. Reading great addiction memoirs about recovery can give you hope and remind you that you’re not alone. This feeling of isolation can lead to depression, or make hard times even harder. On the other hand, feeling connected to someone or feeling like someone understands what you’ve gone through can make you feel like everything is going to be okay—no matter how bad your situation.

But even more than how it captures the bleakness of alcoholism, what I most value in this book is how she narrates her recovery with such brutal honesty. She keeps showing up to 12-step meetings, even when they do nothing for her. Her breakthrough arrives as much through exhaustion as some kind of https://ecosoberhouse.com/ epiphany. She discovers in Catholicism a spirituality that makes sense to her and seems to keep her sober, but she doesn’t proselytise or become too holy for irony. Instead she presents herself as a kind of Godly schmuck, chronically slow on the spiritual uptake. For readers who’ve followed her over three searingly honest books, where survival let alone redemption often seemed unlikely, her final discovery of a bruised and hard-won peace feels like an instance of what can only be called grace.

Blackout by Sarah Hepola

Memoirs like Sarah Hepola’s Blackout, Augusten Burroughs’ Dry, and Drunk Mom by Jowita Bydlowska are recent, searing examples of first person accounts of being drunk and then, eventually, being sober. There are also the best books for addiction recovery self-help books, the AA manuals, the well-meaning but often dry (no pun, and so on) tomes to help one acquire clarity and consistency in a life where addiction often creates chaos and disorder. Written by a cognitive neuroscientist with former substance use struggles, Marc Lewis emphasizes the habitual reward loop in the brain that can cause a substance use disorder to develop. This book also examines the brain’s ability to create new neural pathways and lose the desire to use substances. Lewis provides a description of life in recovery that I relate to myself; that sober life is not a life of deprivation, but one of fulfillment, continued growth, and personal development.

• For these reasons, in many addiction memoirs the end is the weakest part.
• It’s a tough book to read due to the descriptions of horrific traumas people have experienced, however it’s inspirational in its message of hope.
• Instead she presents herself as a kind of Godly schmuck, chronically slow on the spiritual uptake.
• Winning career accolades by day and drinking at night, Knapp brings you to the netherworld of alcohol use disorder.

Drink brings to light the increase in DUIs, “drunkorexia” (limiting eating to get drunker), and other health problems among young women in the United States. If you’re looking to break free of the social pressure of cocktails and bar hopping, this is the book for you. Pooley walks us through a year of her life spent battling alcohol addiction and a recent breast cancer diagnosis, two battles — spoiler alert! Alongside this deeply personal story, she includes scientific research and a wealth of advice, including how to recognize if you have alcohol use disorder (AUD) and how to navigate the social pressures that come with a life of sobriety. A person of extraordinary intellect, Heather King is a lawyer and writer/commentator for NPR — as well as a recovering alcoholic who spent years descending from functional alcoholism to barely functioning at all.