Mitchell S. Jackson frames the narrative around his own experiences and those of his family and community. Weaving together poems, historical documents, and photos, this is an essential book about, among many other things, alcoholism and survival. A New York lawyer, Lisa F. Smith, spirals downward while her friends reach new heights in their careers, life, and relationships. It’s raw; it’s honest, and it’s addiction recovery books a beautiful story of redemption and recovery. In this darkly comic and wrenchingly honest story, Smith describes how her circumstances conspired with her predisposition to depression and self-medication in an environment ripe for addiction to flourish. More than a journey through addiction and recovery though, this is a tale about how trauma shapes us and how we can only free ourselves by facing it.

Sobriety memoirs are personal accounts of an individual’s experiences with addiction, rehab, and recovery. Whether you’re in addiction recovery or know someone who is, reading the personal accounts of others who have been through a similar experience can make the recovery process easier to understand. Below we’ve listed addiction recovery memoirs that offer a fresh and relatable perspective on recovery. Addicts often face similar problems in addiction recovery, although the details vary.

Memoirs: Literature

As you work through the recovery process, you may find these addiction recovery books valuable. Whether you prefer firsthand accounts or polished, scientific writing, there’s a book on this list that will pique your interest. A tale of survival more than recovery, Díaz’s memoir is about unlearning the powerful ideas we are raised with – in this case, that violence and chaos are normal. Díaz writes of her childhood in a public housing project in Puerto Rico and, later, Miami Beach, and an adolescence marked by “juvenile delinquency” and marred by violence, addiction, mental illness, and abuse. Díaz’s resilience – and success – in the face of mighty obstacles registers as part luck, part strength, and part audacity. In those stories, the decision to get better often arrives like a bolt of lightning, but this is rarely the case.

Most people can have one or two cocktails at a work event, or a glass of wine with dinner. But for many alcoholics and binge drinkers, one drink is too many, and a thousand is never enough.

Sethe is haunted, literally and figuratively, by the daughter she killed while escaping slavery in this devastating Pulitzer Prize-winning classic. This is a book about the abject horror and howling trauma of slavery, but it’s also about how we metabolise the nightmares of our lives before.

Stories About Loving Someone With An Addiction

Chaney Allen’s book was the first recovery memoir that was published by a Black woman author. Her story tells the story of a minister’s daughter who grew up poor in Alabama, eventually moving to Cincinnati and falling into substance use disorder, all while raising children.

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. Have you noticed that our world is increasingly obsessed with drinking? Work events, brunch, baby showers, book club, hair salons—the list of where to find booze is endless. Holly Whitaker, in her own path to recovery, discovered the insidious ways the alcohol industry targets women and the patriarchal methods of recovery.

Best 20 Books About Addiction Recovery To Read In 2020

With beautiful prose, Miller’s memoir is about recovering from a lifetime of difficult relationships and a home situation that seems desperate at times. Still, there is redemption at the end of the road as she details a complicated yet loving relationship with her parents, despite the odds. What happens when an ambitious young woman is keeping a secret of addiction? High-profile writer Cat Marnell answers the question in the gripping memoir of her life as she battles bulimia on top of an addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs. Although the details of our addiction and recovery stories may be different, the core of our experiences is often the same. Identifying with others who have been through the hell of addiction and made it to the other side can provide a cathartic sense of relief, providing both hope and the opportunity to feel seen and perhaps a little less alone.

In his follow-up to his first memoir, Tweak, which dealt with his journey into meth addiction, Sheff details his struggle to stay clean. In and out of rehab, he falls into relapse, engaging in toxic relationships and other self-destructive behaviors that threaten to undo the hard-won progress he’s made. Explores the role of family therapy in recovery from mental illness or substance abuse. Explains how family therapy sessions are run and who conducts them, describes a typical session, and provides information on its effectiveness in recovery.

Woman Of Substances: A Journey Into Drugs, Alcohol And Treatment

Senate for 18 years and was the 1972 Democratic candidate for president. Rarely has a public figure addressed such difficult, intimate issues with such courage and bravery. In a moving, passionate memoir, former Senator George McGovern recalls the events leading up to his daughter Terry’s death as a result of alcoholism. Of those who have had similar experiences can be an excellent compliment to treatment. As a child, Helaina Hovitz witnessed the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.

Some of those people have put pen to paper to describe their experiences in memoirs—and to offer hope to others who might be struggling. Most stories about archaeology turn out to be about mortality in the end.

Finding North: A Journey From Addict To Advocate

That’s what you will get with Leslie Jamison’s The Recovering. The book re-examines the stories that we tell about addiction from the perspective of Jamison’s own struggles, and also includes her ongoing conversation with literary and artistic geniuses such as David Foster Wallace and Billie Holiday.

At the age of 15, Cat Marnell began to unknowingly “murder her life” when she became hooked on the ADHD medication prescribed to her by her psychiatrist father. Based on Fisher’s hugely successful one-woman show, Wishful Drinking is the story of growing up in Hollywood royalty, battling addiction, and dealing with manic depression. Her first memoir is an inside look at her famous parents’ marriage and her own tumultuous love affairs (including her on-again, off-again relationship with Paul Simon).

Miller was long known as Emily Doe, the anonymous victim of a sexual assault at Stanford University and the voice behind a viral victim impact statement that changed the terms of debate around consent, violence and rape. 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.

It made me realize the pain I would have brought to my parents if they had lost me. Jerry Stahl was a writer with significant and successful screenwriting credits – Dr. Caligari, Twin Peaks, Moonlighting, and more. But despite that success, Stahl’s heroin habit began to consume him, derailing his career and destroying his health until one final, intense crisis inspired him to get clean. Assures teens with parents who abuse alcohol or drugs that, “It’s not your fault!” and that they are not alone. Encourages teens to seek emotional support from other adults, school counselors, and youth support groups such as Alateen, and provides a resource list.

Wishful Drinking By Carrie Fisher

But then she falls for Booker, and her aunt Charlene—who has been in and out of treatment for alcoholism for decades—moves into the apartment above her family’s hair salon. The Revolution of Birdie Randolph is a beautiful look at the effects of alcoholism on friends and family members in the touching way only Brandy Colbert can master. Are currently struggling with drug or alcohol addiction, you are not alone. Writes with a rare mix of honesty, humor, and compassion about his own wild story and shares the advice and wisdom he has gained through his fourteen years of recovery.

• For him, this book isn’t simply a memoir — it’s a document of his life for his daughter.
• Since we care about all kinds of recovery, we wanted to emphasize that drugs and alcohol are not the only ways that women suffer and not everyone recovers through a 12-Step program.
• While not an addiction-specific book, The Power of the Habit by Charles Duhigg can still be considered one of the best quit drinking books because of its analysis of how habits are responsible for behavior.
• But in this memoir, Burroughs recounts his very regular and ordinary life of working in advertising and enjoying a drunken Manhattan life—until his employers force him to attend rehab.

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. In one scene in the book, Brown describes losing her apartment and going on a four-day crack binge. When women are in a blackout, things are done to them,” Hepola writes.

Ever the feminist, she found that women and other oppressed people don’t need the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous, but a deeper understanding of their own identities. Quit Like a Woman is her informative and relatable guidebook to breaking an addiction to alcohol. Journalist Jenny Valentish knows treatment, AA, and the pathways to addiction and recovery. It’s brutally honest, effects of alcohol and her story reads like so many others – some who didn’t make it to recovery. She further educates the reader with research and a better understanding of the psychology and physiology that drive female addiction with humor and exceptional insight. Have you ever read a book that perfectly blended memoir with cultural history, literary criticism, and reportage?