Many addiction memoirs evince a desire to repay the reader for all the dark places the story has taken them with a thumpingly joyous ending. For these reasons, in many addiction memoirs the end is the weakest part. The various accidental similarities between these books began, before long, to harden into a blueprint, which countless books have faithfully reproduced.
Novels That Capture the Pain and Chaos of Alcoholism
Maybe you’re a pretty moderate drinker, but you feel like booze just isn’t your friend anymore. Maybe none of these things apply to you when it comes to alcohol, but there’s something else in your life that’s not a positive force. A person of extraordinary intellect, Heather King is a lawyer and writer/commentator for NPR — as well as a recovering alcoholic who spent years descending from functional alcoholism to barely functioning at all. From graduating cum laude from law school despite her excessive drinking to languishing in dive bars, King presents a clear-eyed look at her past and what brought her out of the haze of addiction.
Drinking: A Love Story
This is a must read for anyone passionate about exploring their relationship with alcohol and the role a patriarchal system has played in https://ecosoberhouse.com/ rising rates of unhealthy substance use in America. If I have any faith now, it’s in literature’s ability to help us redeem even life’s darkest realities by bringing them into the light. Second, they contain sections describing the lurid drama and dreadful effects of addiction in unsparing detail.
Best Quit Lit Books and Sobriety Memoirs to Inspire Your Recovery
Matt Rowland Hill was born in 1984 in Pontypridd, South Wales, and grew up in Wales and England. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, New Statesman, the Telegraph and other outlets. Or feeling that their lives are somehow unsuited to the form. In addition to authoring two books (her second comes out March 2023), McKowen hosts the Tell Me Something True podcast.
Powerful Addiction Memoirs that Sober People Love
2009’s Lit is the volume that deals with Karr’s alcoholism and desperate search for recovery. It can be read alone, but why would you want to miss out on reading all three in order? Although the first two volumes aren’t overtly about Karr’s alcoholic memoirs addiction, they show its makings in her traumatic home life and a lost adolescence. Meanwhile successful writing always surprises and challenges us, perhaps by defying the conventions of the form to which it belongs or simply by refreshing them in some way. Only a handful of the addiction memoirs of recent decades are also, in my view, singular works of art.
Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp
The Dry Challenge can be especially helpful for people who drink socially, and are looking to take a structured step back to re-evaluate their habits. Alcoholics Anonymous This book offers inspiration for alcohol-free drinks and activities, and tangible tips on how to navigate a month (or beyond!) without alcohol. I had to read this book in small doses because it was so intense. Bessel writes about trauma with great compassion and empathy. Through reading this book I came to better understand myself, my body’s physical reactions, and my mental health. It’s a tough book to read due to the descriptions of horrific traumas people have experienced, however it’s inspirational in its message of hope.
- The story follows Carr’s unbelievable arc through addiction, recovery, cancer, and life as a single parent to come to an understanding of what those dark years meant.
- 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.
- In this post, we’ve put together nine of the best addiction memoirs and quit lit books for you to check out.
- But too often history books written by outsiders focus solely on its colonial past.
- I am not sure I’d be sober today if it weren’t for Tired of Thinking About Drinking.
Straightforward and to the point, Carr helps you examine the reasons you drink in the first place in The Easy Way to Control Alcohol. For example, he explains why stating alcohol is poison and repeating the tagline “Never Question the Decision” can help you change your unconscious thoughts about alcohol, and shift your mindset. This book is a great place to start if you’ve been feeling sober curious. 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.
