11 Gripping Books About Alcoholism and Recovery

Overall, this book is perfect for anyone who’d enjoy an entertaining and surprisingly uplifting story about ending the cycle of addiction. One valuable point from this book is that not everyone needs to reach a “rock bottom” before quitting alcohol. Sometimes, a slow realization of enough being enough is all it takes to start your recovery. 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.

• Podcast and founder of Joy School, helps people raise their joy setpoints regardless of what is happening around them.
• Writer, comedian, and TV personality Dave Holmes takes that notion to heart in his memoir, where he writes about growing up Catholic and closeted in Missouri and how he “accidentally” became an MTV VJ.
• All these books might have been published as memoir in a less stigmatising age.
• The book is short, easy to read, and will leave you with some immediate tools for addressing social situations, sex, and friendship while navigating an alcohol-free lifestyle.
• Having just been released from rehab nine months earlier, his relapse cost him his home, money, career and almost his life.
• Interestingly, Russell Brand was fourteen years sober at the time of writing Recovery.

We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life by Laura McKowen

She references horror tropes and fairy tales and gives readers a completely vulnerable (and often terrifying) look into a dark and traumatizing experience. I read this book before I became a parent and was floored, but have thought about it even more since. It is the heartbreaking and astute account of Sheff’s experience of his son, Nic’s, addiction and eventual recovery. He viscerally paints the picture of the hope-tainted despair, anguish, and havoc that addiction wreaks on an entire family.

Memoir hooks readers with a daughter’s tale of estrangement and love

I mean help, whether in the form of identification, solace or instruction. 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. For one kind of author, helping the reader is the whole point of writing an addiction memoir; for another, even to consider doing best alcoholic memoirs so would be aesthetically fatal. 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. The second major problem for anyone writing an addiction memoir—and it’s often connected to the first—is how to conclude it.

Best Books About Alcohol Recovery

This book tells an incredible story of not only recovery, but also how it connects to race and sexual identity. “State of Paradise” is the second novel van den Berg has set during a pandemic. Her first, 2015’s “Find Me,” concerns a grisly, brain-eating virus that kills hundreds of thousands of Americans in a matter of weeks. “State of Paradise” is not without fantastical detours, but much of it feels real enough.

Writing her way to healing

In what was arguably the most talked-about memoir of the past year, actor and writer/director Jennette McCurdy details what went on behind the scenes in her life before, during, and after making the hit Nickelodeon show iCarly. She bears it all—discussing her eating disorder and the toxic relationship she had with her mother—while using pitch perfect humor, in a memoir that’s hard to stomach at times. But it’s worth it to see how she ultimately takes back control of her 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. 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.

In this post, we’ve put together nine of the best addiction memoirs and quit lit books for you to check out. 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. These intensely personal narratives offer https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/how-alcohol-can-affect-relationships/ unique insights and lessons learned from the author’s past. When you read one of the best memoirs on our list, you’re invited into someone’s life, experiencing their story through their own words, complete with all the emotions, reflections, and raw honesty that accompanies personal recollection.

• Resmaa Menakem shares the latest research on body trauma and neuroscience, as well as provides actionable steps towards healing as a collective.
• 1author pickedI Swear I’ll Make It Up to Youas one of their favorite books, and they sharewhy you should read it.
• Finding that her creativity didn’t come from a bottle, she gets sober and finds a life she didn’t know she wanted.