“This raw, darkly comic series of astonishing vignettes is Emily Colas’ achingly honest chronicle of her twisted journey through the obsessive-compulsive disorder that came to dominate her world. By the time she faced the fact that she was really ‘losing it,’ Colas had become a slave to her own ‘hobbies’ — from the daily hair cutting to incessant inspections of her children’s clothing for bloodstains. Are there any additional books about addiction that you recommend? If you want even more books, we’ve got 16 books about the unglamorous parts of addiction here.
The best books on London’s Addictions, recommended by Dr Matthew Green
Haley, a senior in high school, struggles to help her Iraq War Vet father with his severe PTSD and substance abuse issues. This is hands down the most accurate portrayal of what it feels like to be a blackout drinker in denial that I have ever read. She’s only hiding her wine consumption because everyone in her small town knows she was in rehab and she just wants to move on. But when Hildy becomes privy to a web of town secrets, her increasingly uncontrollable drinking threatens everything. Years before I got sober, Caroline Knapp pulled me into this book with her gorgeous prose. Once I was hooked on her writing, I began to see a reflection of my story in her own.
Blackout by Sarah Hepola
In it, he confronts the fuzzy parameters of truth as it pertains to memoir by acknowledging his supreme unreliability as a narrator and reporting his own story out by interviewing over 60 people who dealt with him during his darkest days. While the book does end with a fairly typical recovery arc, Night of the Gun is unusual in how directly it deals with the idea of truth coming from one person. Carr’s investigation into his past self also reveals a dark best alcoholic memoirs side that is shocking even by the grisly standards of addiction memoirs; he beat women. 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.
- Discussions about motherhood, alcoholism, and how the hell we’re supposed to figure out life make this a memorable read.
- (A 1997 Time cover story described dopamine as “the master molecule of addiction.”) And sometimes the travails of addiction are ascribed to an intrinsic vulnerability that is exacerbated by external factors.
- Persepolis is told in black-and-white comics, which makes this memoir even more iconic.
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- It is the first of Orwell’s published works and set the tone for his dystopian literary classics — and high school required reading — Animal Farm and 1984.
- Raw and real, Pond’s bok shows how he uncovers a new path to recovery outside the traditional abstinence-based programs with the help of his partner, Maureen Palmer.
- Between Breaths reveals how she lived in denial and secrecy for years before finally entering rehab and a life of sobriety.
- Plus, you’ll get to read beautiful writing, and expand your worldview and perspectives.
From her excessive drinking and smoking to disordered eating and falling for the wrong men, Caroline Knapp is seemingly attracted to anything and everything that isn’t good for her. She drinks to cope with life’s difficulties, like the death of her parents, but it’s only after twenty years of dependency that she sees how the “cure” to her stress and anxiety is the real problem. 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. 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. Maybe you’ve been leaning on alcohol too much to try to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vargas’s memoir has been described as “honest and hopeful,” and that tone comes across in the author’s accomplished and moving narration of Between Breaths. The Recovering’s insistence on the need for a different sort of addiction story is a tad unfair. Books diverging from the genre’s hallmarks are already easy to find. Sarah Hepola’s Blackout, while adhering to many narrative beats, also includes lengthy reporting about the science of blackouts.
- As a wildly famous celebrity, he struggled with more than just alcohol.
- 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.
- Auster was so much the old-fashioned author that he worked on a typewriter and disdained email and other forms of electronic communication.
- Part memoir and part how-to, many former drinkers credit Alcohol Lied to Me with helping them to finally beat the bottle.
It made me realize the pain I would have brought to my parents if they had lost me. I used to work in fashion/beauty/celebrity PR, and I related to her lifestyle before she got sober. I thought my party-girl ways were so glamourous, but it was really sad and unfulfilling, despite the glitz and glamour. Check out our picks for the best addiction and recovery memoirs.
This collection of 10 books, spanning memoirs and studies of addiction, offers both excruciating stories from the very trenches of addiction and the hope you need to push toward sobriety. They can transform the way you think about addiction, bust stigma, give you actionable advice to apply to your recovery, and make you feel less alone. I’ve been sober for nine years, and in that time I’ve read a lot of books about addiction.
Carrie Fisher, Augusten Burroughs, Leslie Jamison: 15 great recovery memoirs – Entertainment Weekly News
Carrie Fisher, Augusten Burroughs, Leslie Jamison: 15 great recovery memoirs.
Posted: Wed, 22 Jun 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Best Quit Lit Books and Sobriety Memoirs to Inspire Your Recovery
In sharp and shocking language, Lights On, Rats Out brings us closely into these years. We see the world as Cree did―turned upside down, the richness of life muted and dulled, its pleasures perverted. The heady thrill of meeting with her psychiatrist, Dr. Adam N. Kohl―whose relationship with Cree is at once sustaining and paralyzing―comes to be the only bright spot in her days. “…Brain on Fire is the powerful account of one woman’s struggle to recapture her identity.