Addiction Memoir Books

Beyond the camaraderie of knowing you’re not alone, these books offer practical guidance about the road to sobriety (or your road to changing your relationship with drugs and alcohol). If you’re looking to break free of the social pressure of cocktails and bar hopping, this is the book for you. Pooley walks us through a year of her life spent battling alcohol addiction and a recent breast cancer diagnosis, two battles — spoiler alert! Alongside this deeply personal story, she includes scientific research and a wealth of advice, including how to recognize if you have alcohol use disorder (AUD) and how to navigate the social pressures that come with a life of sobriety. The Empathy Exams author’s stunning book juxtaposes her own relationship to addiction with stories of literary legends like Raymond Carver, and imbues it with rich cultural history. The result is a definitive treatment of the American recovery movement—a memoir in the subgenre like no other.

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

Author William Porter uses the science of best alcoholic memoirs the brain and psychology to help you understand the effects of alcohol on your body and mind. He also offers step-by-step instructions for starting recovery and sticking with it. When 15-year-old Cat moves to a new town in rural Michigan, she’s ecstatic to find a friend in Marlena, a beautiful, pill-popping neighbor. She’s drawn to Marlena’s world and joins her on an adventure of drinking, smoking, and kissing. Marlena’s dark habits worsen, though, and she ends up dead within the year.

• My prompts will help you dig deep and sustain change from the inside out.
• Stoicism is an ancient philosophy that believes self-control, courage, justice, and wisdom are the keys to happiness.
• It is the heartbreaking and astute account of Sheff’s experience of his son, Nic’s, addiction and eventual recovery.
• Turnabout, by Jean Kirkpatrick, was published in 1977, but remains as relevant today as when it was published almost 40 years ago.

Shazia Omar on The Best Novels on Drug Addiction

Behind the infamous hairdo and metal bikini, Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher was leveling out the mood swings of bipolar disorder with a cocktail of cocaine, prescription medication, LSD, and alcohol. In this memoir, equal parts hilarious and lacerating, she documents decades of drug use, overdoses, stints in rehab, relapses, electroconvulsive therapy, broken marriages, and the friend who what is Oxford House died beside her in bed. Before he was a feted columnist for The New York Times, David Carr was a cocaine addict, frequenter of crackhouses, low-level drug dealer, heavy drinker, and brawler.

You’re entered! But wait…

Calls to numbers marked with (I) symbols will be answered or returned by one of the treatment providers listed in our Terms and Conditions, each of which is a paid advertiser. The Power of Habit fundamentally changed the way I understood the inner workings of my brain. There’s also the dark comic relief offered throughout, which I am a big sucker for. Burroughs’ story will break your heart, but if you’re familiar with his other work, that might not surprise you. What’s so fascinating about this book is that he approached it from the standpoint of a journalist.

Kan’s grandmother survived the Great Famine, and her mother knowingly ignored the One-Child Policy when she gave birth to Karoline. Now, it’s up to Kan herself to reach for the dreams society told her she could never achieve. Inheritance tells the story of Dani Shapiro, who learns that the man she called Dad for 50 years isn’t her biological father after taking a genealogy test. Shapiro’s novel is a poignant examination of identity and what happens when one’s wholeness and understanding of who they are is completely uprooted. True tales from the White House never get old—especially when told by someone as remarkable as Michelle Obama. Her memoir, Becoming, is a candid reflection of her journey to the White House, from a little girl on the South Side of Chicago to an accomplished lawyer, mother, and First Lady.

Here, Naus recounts jail time, an attempted murder charge and an uphill battle to reclaim a life nearly lost to the stranglehold of addiction in this outrageous memoir. Divorce, abandonment, foreclosure and a mass shooting… Mishka Shubaly had plenty of reasons to wallow in drink and drugs, and he does so with wild abandon in I Swear I’ll Make It Up to You. His first full-length memoir follows him from a seemingly endless rock bottom to a passion for running that leads him out of a life of self-destruction and chaos. It’s an inspiring and, at times, unbelievable tale told with unflinching honesty and a heavy dose of self-deprecation. Michael Pond has treated people with addiction for years as a psychotherapist but finds himself homeless, broke and alone when he succumbs to his own battle with alcohol use disorder.

When she’s a child, we’re presented with the world as a child might see it. When she’s hooked on Demetrol, we perceive events through the distorted viewpoint of an addict. This is the kind of myopic or unreliable narrator we encounter frequently in novels – conspicuously naïve or self-delusive, and unchaperoned by a consolingly wise authorial presence—but almost never in memoir. Told in the present tense (another rarity in autobiography), the result is a stunningly immersive and intimate story. We seem to experience Ditlevsen’s life with her, moment by vivid moment.

• Although not an exhaustive list, these ten books strongly impacted me and helped me get to six years of sobriety.
• Eventually saved by her family, King writes with equal parts sensitivity and humor about redemption and compassion for others.
• 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.
• Her strengths as a writer are all on display in this book—she’s frank, funny, fearsomely smart—but what I appreciate most is her ability to slice straight to the heart of a matter with unerring aim, sparing no one (including herself).
• It can be read alone, but why would you want to miss out on reading all three in order?

Shahroo Izadi is a psychologist specializing in behavior change, a speaker, coach, and the author of The Kindness Method. “How To Drink Without Drinking is beautifully produced, with gorgeous photos of many of the recipes,” says Willoughby. “These cover a wide range of drinks from cordials, shrubs, cocktails, fermented drinks, lattes, shakes, and juices to hot drinks and many more. There are also short sections on ingredients, equipment, food pairings, and substitutes for wines.”

The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober by Catherine Gray

She has a master’s degree in journalism from Syracuse University, lives in Brooklyn, and proudly detests avocados. Cathy Park Hong defines “minor feelings” as those that crop up when you’re faced with lies about your own racial identity and lived reality. That dissonance is at the core of her 2020 book of essays, which documents her own upbringing as the daughter of Korean immigrants and her musings on the current state of race in America.