Most notably, it’s a brutally honest — and hilarious — reflection on the late writer’s path to sobriety. I’ve been sober for nine years, and in that time I’ve read a lot of books about addiction. In fact, I started reading about addiction before I got sober–-perhaps because something in the very back of my mind was telling me that someday these books about addiction would be quite relevant to my life. Having been in recovery for many years, and working here at Shatterproof, I often get asked to recommend books about addiction. So here’s a list of my all-time favorite reads about substance use disorders.
Powerful Memoirs About Mental Illness & Addiction
Ditlevsen’s failure of nerve, causing her to wrap up three volumes of the most trenchant and unillusioned autobiography ever written with a feeble daydream, is easily explained. She surely felt the reader (and perhaps the author) had endured too much pain in the preceding story to be sent away without solace. The fact that, in so doing, she effectively obeyed a formal convention of addiction memoir helps explain how many of those conventions arose. It was not due to some kind of lineage of influence reaching back to De Quincey, but the inevitable result of applying the simplifying dictates of storytelling and lowest-common-denominator audience needs to roughly similar experiences. The fact that even a great artist like Ditlevsen can capitulate to such dictates, if only once, demonstrates how powerful they are. Second, they contain sections describing the lurid drama and dreadful effects of addiction in unsparing detail.
Novels That Capture the Pain and Chaos of Alcoholism
If you’re feeling down about “missing out” on life if you cut back on alcohol or got sober, read this book. Ward and Libaire show you how to get intoxicated, but with life instead of alcohol. Occasionally reminiscent of Sylvia Plath, Karr’s writing style is simultaneously unsentimental and moving. Clegg had a thriving life as a literary agent when he walked https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/why-does-alcohol-cause-bruising/ away from his seemingly-fulfilling world for a two-month crack binge. Having just been released from rehab nine months earlier, his relapse cost him his home, money, career and almost his life. Capturing the drama, tension, paranoia and short-term bliss of drug addiction, his book explores how the patterns of addiction can be traced to the past.
Glorious Rock Bottom by Bryony Gordon
Since then, she’s proven to be a force to be reckoned with all on her own. Becoming explores every aspect of Michelle’s life, from her youthful aspirations to entering the White House and her journey as a mother. Importantly, she discusses the immense challenges she faced as an Asian American in an industry lacking true representation. best alcoholic memoirs Wu also emotionally details the sexual harassment she experienced while working on Fresh Off the Boat, explaining why she was relieved when the sitcom finally ended. As an actor, Constance Wu found mainstream success starring on the sitcom Fresh Off the Boat and in hit movies Hustlers and Crazy Rich Asians.
- Developed by registered dietitians, this book takes a new twist on classic cocktails.
- 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).
- In 2018, Kerry Washington learned that her dad, Earl, wasn’t her biological father and that her parents had conceived her with the help of a sperm donor.
- Even the second time around I found it so viscerally powerful that at times I was overwhelmed.
