Drink is not an addiction memoir so much as an investigative look into why women, specifically, drink and despite my mindset at the time of reading it, I did find it fascinating. This is one of the most compelling books on recovery and humanity ever written. Dr. Maté shares the powerful insight that substance use is, in many cases, a survival mechanism. When something awful happens to us, our way to cope is to turn off and even turn against ourselves, as a method of resilience. The book discusses drug policies, substance use treatment, and the root causes of substance use. More than anything, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts provides a voice of kind generosity and understanding to anyone who is looking to learn more for themselves or a loved one.

The Best Books About Addiction and Recovery

She started sneaking sips from her parents’ wine glasses as a kid, and went through adolescence drinking more and more. By the time she was an adult in a big city, all she did was drink. Blackout is her poignant story of alcoholism and those many missing hours that disappeared when she had just enough to drink to wipe out her memory. Hepola gets through the darkest parts of her story with self-deprecating humor and a keen eye on what she was burying by drinking. Reading these books about alcoholism (memoirs, nonfiction, and Alcohol Use Disorder fiction) and recommending them to you is part of my personal therapy. They encourage you to embrace the sober “Irish exit,” leaving the party early to enjoy a starlit stroll home.

• She educates the reader on how to best stop engaging in enabling behavior, in order to truly begin helping a loved one find the road to recovery.
• At a young age, she became both protector and cop to her sister, who was addicted to drugs.
• The result was a tale whose bracing darkness is ultimately redeemed not by its perfunctorily hopeful ending but by the extraordinary force and beauty of its telling.
• Addiction, with its cyclical copping, its single-minded want, is a monotonous thing.
• A life of recovery is an awakened life of purpose, service, and meaning.

#3 – When AA Doesn’t Work For You: Rational Steps to Quitting Alcohol by Albert Ellis

You’ll also find options for dessert drinks, frozen drinks, and holiday drinks without relying on sugar for flavor. Reading We are the Luckiest by Laura McKowen can quite possibly save your life. He comes from the book publishing world and, again, was someone who was successful and smart, but in active addiction. He https://tonyschicken.co.uk/cognitive-dissonance-treatment/ lost trust of people around him and in his field, but through sobriety he has been able to regain that trust and help many people along the way.

Louise Foxcroft on The History of Medicine and Addiction

Looking for a gripping read that delves into the world of alcoholism? Whether you’re seeking personal insight or a compelling story, these 20 books on alcoholics are sure to captivate you. From memoirs to fiction, these titles offer raw and honest portrayals of addiction, recovery, and the human experience. Get ready to be moved and inspired by these powerful narratives that shed light on the complexities of alcoholism.

• Developed by registered dietitians, this book takes a new twist on classic cocktails.
• As a privileged girl from a family of colonists in early 20th-century Dominica, she clashed with her environment, her peers, and her parents.
• Nicole and Eric think they are running away to freedom, but what they discover instead are the shackles of heroin addiction.
• Having said that, I did—while reading Ditlevsen’s Dependency—occasionally need to put the book down and take a few deep breaths.
• As her marriage dissolved and she struggled to find a reason to stay clean, Karr turned to Catholicism as a light at the end of the tunnel.
• The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober by Catherine Gray is a refreshing and insightful book on sobriety.

If you read enough addiction memoirs, the genre’s particular narrative cadence become easy to spot. There’s the firecracker-bright memory of the first time using, best memoirs about alcoholism often recounted in crackling prose. Substance-fueled revelry begets accelerating recklessness—blotted-out nights, disastrous sexual encounters, careers skidding into limbo, glee followed by horror.