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11 Best Addiction and Sobriety Books

I chose Atlas of the Heart because it touches on the important theme of second chances. This book provides language for sharing our most heartbreaking moments as a way to connect. Stories heal, and no circle knows that more than the recovery circle.

For One More Day

The simple fact that we are not alone in our struggle can be enough to find our way out of the dark. Dr. Brown gives us tools to shape and share our thoughts in the most honest way possible, which can be a crucial step towards healing. These pages are filled with the teachings of ancient Stoics such as Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus. Stoicism is an ancient philosophy that believes best alcoholic memoirs self-control, courage, justice, and wisdom are the keys to happiness. This book functions as daily devotional with reflective meditations and modern day translations on how to improve your mental health.

Addiction and Recovery Memoirs Written from a Male Perspective

New in recovery, a chance encounter with Gray Hawk, a 74-year old Native American, showed her that healing herself would include looking within, taking Steps, and creating a house of healing for other women.This book is that journey. It was the beginning of using externals to fix an internal problem. A 74-year old Native American found me at ten months in recovery. He showed me a path to follow, including opening a house of healing for other women. His teachings, spiritual principles, and a lot of work helped me achieve 32 years in recovery. I too was a high-functioning professional with a drinking and cocaine addiction.

best memoirs about alcoholism

drinking: A Love Story By Caroline Knapp

My addiction always took me to new lows, and cost me many jobs over the years. I very much related to her always feeling “less than” in normal life, and only becoming confident and alive once she poured alcohol down her throat. ‘Manifest Destiny’ was an idea brought forward in the United States in the 1830s as a amphetamine addiction treatment rationalisation for western expansion.

  • Early sobriety forces, like giving birth, a quick and complete break with a former life in order to make way for a new, sometimes ambiguously desired one.
  • Reading these books about alcoholism (memoirs, nonfiction, and fiction) and recommending them to you is part of my personal therapy.
  • She’s focusing on her schoolwork and is on track to finish high school at the top of her class.

High-functioning and high on everything—Smith’s double life as a corporate lawyer in Manhattan and a nightly drinker and drug user is laid bare in this fast-paced, riveting memoir. King delivers a stark and luminous account of her life as a successful attorney lost in alcoholism. Her prose is meditative and unsparing, as she charts a spiritual path through darkness toward grace. That’s because, although men are more likely to drink excessively, women tend to metabolize alcohol more slowly.

  • I said this convention concerned reading more directly than writing, but—since all good writing involves deep sensitivity to the reader’s experience—the two things are ultimately inseparable.
  • She was also criticized for her seeming disregard for her child.
  • Even if you are not struggling with addiction, it is a beautifully-written and emotionally-intelligent memoir that I think many could benefit from reading.
  • Elton John is never the one to hold back any information regarding his life and the things he went through.

Whether you’re well-versed in the subject or totally new to it, here are nine of the smartest and most moving https://www.serenicoach.com/drug-dependence-vs-addiction-differences-impact-2/ examples. James went to my college, Denison University, and is friends with many of my friends, so I loved reading the parts that took place (“fictionally”) in Granville, Ohio. This is one of the first books I read about addiction ever, before I realized I had a problem. Maybe you’ve been leaning on alcohol too much to try to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. Maybe you enjoyed a successful Dry January, so you’re questioning alcohol’s role in your life.

best memoirs about alcoholism

the Recovering By Leslie Jamison

best memoirs about alcoholism

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. She thought the normal people who could drink casually were lucky.

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