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My guess is that most addiction memoirs involve some kind of compromise between the author’s aesthetic and ethical impulses. This ethical dimension (or an aesthetic impurity) is a distinctive aspect of addiction memoir as a literary form. Although she makes faltering progress in building a simulacrum of grown-up life, her relationship with alcohol—“I had an appetite for drink, a taste for it, a talent”—steadily overtakes everything. By the end of her drinking she is reduced to crouching on a stairwell outside her apartment, glugging whisky with her one-year-old son and failing marriage inside. 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. This is no joyful, linear skip towards sobriety and redemption.
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. Alcohol Explained is a spectacularly helpful guide on alcohol and alcoholism. Author William Porter uses the science of the brain and psychology to help you understand the effects of alcohol on your body and mind. He also offers step-by-step instructions for starting recovery and sticking with it. Augusten Burroughs’ memoir covers a decade-long battle with sobriety, with a variety of wins and losses along the way. During his days as a young Manhattanite working in advertising, he tried everything to hide his constant drinking, including spraying cologne on his tongue.
Best Non-Fiction Books About Alcohol Recovery
When she’s a child, we’re presented with the world as a child might see it. When she’s hooked on Demetrol, we perceive events through the distorted viewpoint of an addict. This is the kind of myopic or unreliable narrator we encounter frequently in novels – conspicuously naïve or self-delusive, and unchaperoned by a consolingly wise authorial presence—but almost never in memoir.
She spent her childhood chasing after him, flying a quarter of the way around the world to tug at the hem of his jacket. Now that he is in his eighties, she contemplates her obligation to an absentee father. The Truth About Unringing Phones is an exploration of responsibility and culpability told in experimental and fragmented essays. In addition to authoring two books (her second comes out March 2023), McKowen hosts the Tell Me Something True podcast.
Best Books Related to Healing and Mental Health
She’s an iconic, witty literary voice, an engrossing storyteller, and this book too is a great study in memoir. Addiction and recovery memoirs are great reminders that you are not alone and that many, many others have gone down the difficult road to sobriety. In addition to personal stories, many of these books delve deep into the personal and societal psychology of drinking and drug use. Today, some of my favorite works of fiction are those which manage to portray the complex multitudes of ways in which alcoholism affects people—not just the addicts themselves, but their friends, family, and co-workers. It is easy to use addiction as a crutch, a way to build plot or signal “here’s a bad dude,” but it is much harder to accurately and humanely depict the life-warping pain of struggling with alcoholism. The books which do it best, in my opinion, are often not consciously “about” addiction at all, but show its effects lingering in the corners of every page.
- Elizabeth Vargas takes off her perfectly poised reporter mask and shows you the authentic person behind the anchor desk.
- Most of their friends spent their weekends living the “rose all day” lifestyle, and every first date wanted to meet at a bar.
- It’s raw; it’s honest, and it’s a beautiful story of redemption and recovery.
- It would be really easy to simply gloss over the pivotal, seeping role of alcoholism in this book, being as it is, a truly gripping murder story.
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. 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 https://ecosoberhouse.com/ break with a former life in order to make way for a new, sometimes ambiguously desired one. The book ends on a hopeful bottom, where Don is clear-eyed and ready to give not drinking (and writing) another chance. It is the new day that every drunk faces each time they quit again.
Quit Like a Woman by Holly Whitaker
Many of them, like Caroline Knapp, started in their early teens and began to use alcohol as “liquid armor,” a way to protect themselves against the difficult realities of life. In this extraordinarily candid and revealing memoir, Knapp offers important insights not only about alcoholism, but about life itself and how we learn to cope with it.It was best alcoholic memoirs love at first sight. Over the past several decades, books falling under the umbrella of “addiction memoir” have become omnipresent. Whether you’re well-versed in the subject or totally new to it, here are nine of the smartest and most moving examples. The Sober Diaries follows the narrative of author Clare Pool’s journey in quitting drinking.
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. Before his death in 2015, Carr was a beloved New York Times journalist. Calling on his skills as a reporter, Carr used 60 videotaped interviews, legal and medical records and three years of research and reporting to share his journey from crack-house regular to lauded columnist. Fact-checking his own past, Carr’s investigation of his own life dives deep into his experiences with addiction, recovery, cancer and life as a single parent. Blackout by Sarah Hepola is a brutally honest quit lit memoir of living through blackout after blackout—something that many who’ve struggled with heavy alcohol use can relate to. Beyond being informative, this powerful book has helped countless people dive deeper into their relationship with alcohol and make positive changes in their lives.
portrait Of An Addict As A Young Man By Bill Clegg
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. Journalist Jenny Valentish takes a gendered look at drugs and alcohol, using her own story to light the way. Mining the expertise of 35 leading researchers, clinicians and psychiatrists, she explores the early predictors of addictive behaviour, such as trauma, temperament and impulsivity. Unexplained men and bruises the next morning are only a few of the unremembered experiences Sarah Hepola recalls in this honest, raw, poignant memoir. Finding that her creativity didn’t come from a bottle, she gets sober and finds a life she didn’t know she wanted.
- Maybe you enjoyed a successful Dry January, so you’re questioning alcohol’s role in your life.
- Funny, informative, and authentic, Poole has a welcoming light-hearted voice on the very serious topic of substance use.
- 1author pickedWoman of Substancesas one of their favorite books, and they sharewhy you should read it.
- For every parent riddled with guilt, for anyone waking up in the shame cave (again), for every person who has had a messy struggle forward towards redemption… this book is for you.