Like Hepola, I loved the excitement of the whole bar scene, and quite often, drank until I blacked out. Trying to blackout things from my childhood that caused me so much anxiety and pain. And then having to remember and heal from it all when I got sober. Over the past several decades, books falling under the umbrella of “addiction memoir” have become omnipresent.
mental disorders?
Don Birnam in The Lost Weekend (1944) is really its creator, Charles R. Jackson. One hint that the author and protagonist of A Fan’s Notes (1968) are really the same person is that they are both called Frederick Exley. All these books might have been published as memoir in a less stigmatising =https://ecosoberhouse.com/ age.
- In other kinds, as in novels, endings are artifices of form, and the trick is not to let this feel true for the reader.
- There’s a long, beautiful history of writers chronicling how they’ve dealt with alcoholism and addiction.
- There’s no award for “Most Sobriety Memoirs Read,” so read them for yourself — let their wisdom be its own award (I can feel your eye rolls. I’m sorry.).
- Maybe you’re a pretty moderate drinker, but you feel like booze just isn’t your friend anymore.
Best Addiction and Sobriety Books
- 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.
- Three years sober, Jowita Bydlowska celebrates the birth of her first child with a glass of champagne, and just like that, she is spiraling back into the life of drinking she thought she had escaped.
- 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.
It’s raw; it’s honest, and it’s a beautiful story of redemption and recovery. 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. King is a writer, lawyer and NPR contributor whose memoir chronicles her decades-long downward spiral into alcoholism, from her small New England hometown to seedy restaurants where she waitressed and cockroach-ridden lofts where she lived. Eventually saved by her family, King writes with equal parts sensitivity and humor about redemption and compassion for others.
The Best Addiction Memoirs for the Sober Curious
The Sober Diaries follows the narrative of author Clare Pool’s journey in quitting drinking. The book covers her whole first-year experience of sobriety, as well as the unexpected challenges she faced along the way. 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. Ditlevsen’s trilogy, by contrast, plunges us into the perspective of a succession of her former selves.
Stories About Loving Someone with an Addiction
If you or a loved one is struggling with any form of substance use disorder, American Addiction Centers can help. With facilities scattered across the U.S., AAC is a leading provider of evidence-based treatment and mental health services. Reach out to an admissions counselor at to learn more about treatment and take the first steps toward recovery today. I read this book before I became a parent and was floored, but have thought about it even more since.
“This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life”
This Naked Mind by Annie Grace is one of the most loved sobriety books ever written. In it, Annie talks about her own experiences with addiction while keeping things deeply relatable to anyone who’s questioned alcohol’s role in their life. Second, they contain sections describing the lurid drama and dreadful effects of addiction in unsparing detail. Unvarnished accounts of the havoc and disaster of addiction, whether played for farce or pathos, are as reliably found in the most artistically ambitious addiction memoirs as in the least.
- Mining the expertise of 35 leading researchers, clinicians and psychiatrists, she explores the early predictors of addictive behaviour, such as trauma, temperament and impulsivity.
- Bydlowska depicts life as a new mom while under the influence with honesty and humility, discovering she can overcome the seemingly impossible for her child.
- Determined to get clean, Beck develops a unique approach to sobriety that changes the trajectory of his life.
- 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.
- The fact that, in so doing, she effectively obeyed a formal convention of addiction memoir helps explain how many of those conventions arose.
A powerful tool when used in conjunction with treatment, the concept pairs motivational techniques, cognitive behavior therapy, and mindfulness strategies. Whether you’ve been to treatment, you’re contemplating rehab, or your loved one is struggling with substance misuse, the more tools you have in your arsenal the better. Everything from inpatient rehab and sober living facilities to peer-support groups and outpatient care can move you or your loved one another step closer to long-term recovery. Annie’s book is so important (and she’s a wonderful human to boot). She brilliantly weaves psychological, neurological, cultural, social and industry factors best alcohol recovery books with her own journey. Without scare tactics, pain, or rules, she offers a strategy to give you freedom from alcohol.
Drug Memoir A List
The result is a new, science-based approach to treating and managing addiction. Stefanie Wilder-Taylor has always had a complicated Sober living home relationship with alcohol. Authors Amanda Eyre Ward and Jardine Libraire met shortly after getting sober. They quickly became friends, bonding over their shared desire for an exciting, outside-the-lines life. Most of their friends spent their weekends living the “rose all day” lifestyle, and every first date wanted to meet at a bar.
