The memoir follows Stephanie Land, a single mother, as she went from cleaning houses and moving in and out of homeless shelters and other temporary housing to, eventually, earning her college degree and finding stable work as a journalist. As a bonus, her important story has since been brought to life on screen, in a critically acclaimed Netflix series starring Margaret Qualley. Reading is so much more than just a temporary distraction from the reality of your daily life.
“I’m Black and I’m Sober: A Minister’s Daughter Tells Her Story about Fighting the Disease of Alcoholism–And Winning”
- This is one of the most compelling books on recovery and humanity ever written.
- Try these compelling narrative nonfiction books on addiction and recovery for your book stack.
- Meanwhile the reader is tacitly licensed to enjoy all this mayhem and calamity with a degree of voyeuristic relish and, equally, to take a vicarious pleasure in the author’s recklessness and transgression.
- This book reads like a conversation, and teaches us to get curious.
- Inheritance tells the story of Dani Shapiro, who learns that the man she called Dad for 50 years isn’t her biological father after taking a genealogy test.
- This book also examines the brain’s ability to create new neural pathways and lose the desire to use substances.
When combined with counseling, this approach is proven highly effective. The Italian cardiologist and fellow of the https://dev-sciyah.pantheonsite.io/2021/04/13/20-best-books-for-alcoholism-to-transcend/ International Association for Cannabis as Medicine proposes five books on Medicinal Marijuana and explains why we should be reading them. For a nonfiction book that sheds light on the prescription drug crisis in the US, and how that came about, look no further than Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, which reads like a thriller. She is a courageous woman in recovery and someone I enjoy following on social media.
How to Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell
Beyond being informative, this powerful book has helped countless people dive deeper into their relationship with alcohol and make positive changes in their lives. Stefanie Wilder-Taylor has always had a complicated relationship with alcohol. 2009’s Lit is the volume that deals with Karr’s alcoholism and desperate search for recovery. It can be read alone, but why would you want to miss out on reading all three in order? Although the first two volumes aren’t overtly about Karr’s addiction, they show its makings in her traumatic home life and a lost adolescence.
Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife by Brenda Wilhelmson
What was meant to be a positive and happy change led to depression, which she self-medicated with drinking, eventually consuming over a bottle of wine a day. It’s understandable to feel alone and like no one can relate to your addiction. Luckily, there’s a whole genre of books that prove you are not the only one who has battled addiction. 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.
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison
After his descent into addiction, we follow Clune through detox, treatment, and finally into recovery as he returns to his childhood home, where the memory disease and his heroin-induced white out begin to fade. It is a rigorous investigation that offers clarity, hope, and even beauty to anyone who wants to understand the disease or its cure. This tenth anniversary edition includes a new preface by the author. “Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman’s coming of age on the Seabird Island Band in the Pacific Northwest. The third in a memoir trilogy that includes the critically acclaimed The Liars’ Club and Cherry, Lit introduces Mary Karr as a full grown woman, poet, wife, and mother struggling with alcoholism.
Teetering on the brink, Peres realizes he must let go of his frenetic lifestyle to reclaim his life and kick his (at its peak) 60-pill-a-day habit. Nearly 30 years after her older sister was killed by an abusive ex-boyfriend in 1990, Cristina Rivera Garza traveled to Mexico to unravel the case. She documented that months-long journey in this Pulitzer Prize-winning true-crime book, piecing together the evidence to paint a loving, long-unseen picture of her sister.
“The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober” by Catherine Gray
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. I compiled a short list of powerful addiction memoirs to add to your reading list.
This book provides an amazing framework for embracing our true selves in a society that tries to tell us we’re not already whole as we are. If you struggle with anything related to body image, you won’t regret this read. This book may also help you see sobriety as a gift you’re giving to your body. She highlights best books on alcoholism not only her relationship to alcohol, but also key takeaways from her many attempts to get sober. Reading her book is like sharing a cup of coffee with your wise best friend.
Next we have Mary Karr’s Lit, which is also the third book in a trilogy; it followed The Liars’ Club and Cherry. It’s a memoir of her addiction to alcohol, and her subsequent recovery, and her conversion to Catholicism. Over the past several decades, books falling under the umbrella of “addiction memoir” have become omnipresent.
- Her life in shambles, it becomes clear that she is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
- Once his 30 days are up, he has to figure out how to return to his New York City lifestyle sans alcohol.
- This was the first book I read on this subject, and I instantly could relate to her feelings.
- Only in rare cases—as when the subject of a biography dies—is the answer simple.
- A brilliant, nuanced study in desire, self-actualization, and recovery, Melissa Febos’s debut focuses on her time as a dominatrix in NYC while studying at The New School and battling a heroin addiction.
Ironically, Charlamagne’s fear of failure—of falling into the life of stagnation or crime that caught up so many of his friends and family in his hometown of Moncks Corner—has been the fuel that has propelled him to success. However, even after achieving national prominence as a radio personality, Charlamagne still found himself paralyzed Sober living house by anxiety and distrust. Now, in Shook One, he is working through these problems—many of which he traces back to cultural PTSD—with help from mentors, friends, and therapy. Through therapy, he’s figuring out how to get over the irrational fears that won’t take him anywhere positive. “When thirty-year-old, award-winning human rights journalist Mac McClelland left Haiti after reporting on the devastating earthquake of 2010, she never imagined how the assignment would irrevocably affect her own life.