Her story is a beautiful reminder of how safety and support can lead the way to incredible healing. After finishing A Happier Hour, the bar was set high for future reads (no pun intended). Weller has a relatable story for any high-achiever who finds themselves with boozy, foggy evenings that turn into hangovers the next morning. Written with raw vulnerability, the pages of this book are filled with an honest look at her own relationship to alcohol.
- Thanks to an alcohol- and drug-free life, McKowen now feels all of her feelings, no longer has to balance multiple lies, and is fully present with her daughter.
- As a privileged girl from a family of colonists in early 20th-century Dominica, she clashed with her environment, her peers, and her parents.
- Ahead, see the 15 stories of struggle, failure, recovery, and grace that have moved us the most.
Wishful Drinking
Identifying with accomplished writers whose creativity seemed to thrive in a haze of intoxication, she fell further into the depths of alcoholism before hitting rock bottom. After failed attempts at sobriety, she found a combination of treatments—attending meetings, sharing her story and the 12-step AA program—that worked for her. Despite being published less than a year ago, Jamison’s memoir is a gritty and honest must-read. 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.
- Dry is a heartbreaking memoir of Augusten Burrough’s story of addiction, beginning with an intervention organized by his coworkers and boss and his first bout of sobriety.
- Still, his insatiable desire for alcohol and sex upends his entire life on one fateful night.
- Maté challenges the idea that addiction is a medical disease and that drugs are inherently addictive.
- Her story is a beautiful reminder of how safety and support can lead the way to incredible healing.
Breaking Addiction: A 7-Step Handbook for Ending Any Addiction
You can learn more about addiction and relate to authors through their stories, reminding yourself that you aren’t alone in your journey. In this post, we’ve put together nine of the best addiction memoirs and quit lit books for you to check out. From painfully honest stories to science-based tips, there’s a title on this list that’s sure to inspire and motivate you or someone in your life. I compiled a short list of powerful addiction memoirs to add to your reading list.
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
Take that first step on the road to recovery and make better choices, every day. I am not sure I’d be sober today if it weren’t for Tired of Thinking About Drinking. (And for good reason!) Atomic Habits offers practical strategies for making meaningful changes to your habits and routines, one tiny step at a time. This book provides an eye-opening perspective on and insight into how racism and white supremacy can lead to intergenerational trauma. Resmaa Menakem shares the latest research on body trauma and neuroscience, as well as provides actionable steps towards healing as a collective. These insights can introduce a whole new dimension of healing while on a sobriety or moderation journey.
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
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. 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.
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. Running with Scissors is true-life memoir that recounts Burroughs’ troubled childhood. His mother suffered from mental illness and addiction, creating a situation in which Burroughs was raised in a tumultuous and unpredictable manner. This book is unique in the fact that it chronicles his childhood trauma, as well as how it directly related to his first forays into drug and alcohol use. Although his childhood experience was remarkably different https://ecosoberhouse.com/ from the norm, it still illustrates the vulnerability that emotional abuse creates in relation to the formation of addiction. The journey through addiction to recovery is a deeply personal experience, with no two people going though the same process to reach sobriety.
Louise Foxcroft on The History of Medicine and Addiction
Quitting alcohol completely can be a challenge, but there are more ways to do it than ever before. A book’s total score is based on multiple factors, including the number of people who have voted for it and how highly those voters ranked the book. We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview. Exploring a historical era through crime is a particularly interesting way to explore that society, says award-winning novelist Anna Mazzola.
#5 – Living Sober by Anonymous
The Recovering, when it operates as a memoir, is equally lucent; the reader is ferried into the perils of addiction by a nimble, stylish narrator. Jamison, 34, is the author of a novel (The Gin Closet) and a well-received what is alcoholism collection of essays (The Empathy Exams). It largely succeeds in moving away from an overly academic tone, thanks mostly to personal narration; as Jamison recounts her decision to move to Nicaragua in her early 20s, she lays out what she hoped to gain from the travel.
That’s because, although men are more likely to drink excessively, women tend to metabolize best books for addiction recovery alcohol more slowly. This makes them more vulnerable to the long-term health effects of heavy drinking. And yes — we hate to be the bearers of bad news, but even moderate drinking carries some risks.