Mainstream recovery culture has become insular, circular, and stale. The rest were invaluable resources for me after I quit drinking when I still needed guidance for repairing my brain, rebuilding my body, and resurrecting my spirit. Customers find the writing style easy to read, well-written, and clear. They also say the book provides a strong foundation of recovery philosophies, both wisdom and thought.

Incredible Recovery and Sobriety Memoirs I Want Everyone to Read

She grew up with a tragic journey, running away and becoming exposed to alcohol, drugs, and sex at a young age, and leaning on those vices to get by. A Piece of Cake is her gripping tale of crashing down to the bottom and crawling back to the top. In college, my friends and I joked that it’s not alcoholism until you graduate.

Novels That Capture the Pain and Chaos of Alcoholism

Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet. Nevertheless, this list should keep you busy well into next year. We’ll revisit the topic, and report on any new books that can help you learn, grow, and thrive in recovery.

#5 – Living Sober by Anonymous

There’s a long, beautiful history of writers chronicling how they’ve dealt with alcoholism and addiction. This book is highly recommended for anyone who, like me, is or was terrified of living a boring life. This book will inspire anyone looking for fun and adventure to create incredible memories while living alcohol-free. Reading We are the Luckiest by Laura McKowen can quite possibly save your life.

Genetic factors, environmental influences, cultural norms, belief systems, and a lack of alternative coping mechanisms can all factor into the risk of developing alcoholism. Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a fascinating system for reprogramming behavior by altering cognitive associations. This book is the most basic guide for NLP that I have found, and the authors describe how using NLP has changed the lives of people they care about. While this book does not discuss biochemical repair, it can be extremely liberating to realize that you can shed the “diseased” label and move on with your life. This view is not accepted by most mainstream recovery programs, but Dr. Lewis makes a compelling case that these institutions have lagged behind the times (and the brain science). Narrower in its scope than the previous book, The Vitamin Cure conveys a simple approach to using basic nutrients to fight withdrawal and cravings.

The definitive guide to alcohol and alcoholism

Science cannot presently explain why some people experience severe physical addiction, even DTs, and proceed to drink “socially” later in life. Mainstream programs often write these people off as “not real alcoholics,” but this is a dogmatic categorization that often fails to account for real physical dependence at an earlier stage of life. This book was written to help mankind avert totalitarianism, and you will probably not enjoy it if you care little for philosophy or history. However, I found that it offered subtle applications for combating groupthink of any kind. If you want to transcend alcoholism once and for all, it’s groupthink – whether around alcohol, or around defective mainstream recovery – that you will have to challenge and rise above on your own.

The book ends on a hopeful bottom, where Don is clear-eyed and ready to give not drinking (and writing) another chance. It is the new day that every drunk faces each time they quit again. I first read this book in high school, and revisited it after I quit drinking. I found that the addition of life experience, especially my struggle with booze, imbued this book with renewed significance.

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Published by Alcoholics Anonymous, this work does not offer advice on how to get sober; instead, it offers information on how to maintain sobriety on a day-to-day basis. Countless people in recovery have found the simple advice to be a comfort when faced with cravings, helping them to avoid a potentially disastrous relapse. One of the most important messages that resounds throughout this work is that sobriety is more than just not drinking, it is a daily practice of commitment to healthy and engaged living. Living Sober is a recommended read for anyone using the 12 step method. It is easy to use addiction as a crutch, a way to build plot or signal “here’s a bad dude,” but it is much harder to accurately and humanely depict the life-warping pain of struggling with alcoholism. The books which do it best, in my opinion, are often not consciously “about” addiction at all, but show its effects lingering in the corners of every page.

1. The good news is that regardless of the “root causes”, anyone with this disorder can decide to take control of their biochemistry, psychology, social influences, and spiritual development.
2. The responses to comments on fitrecovery.com are designed to support, not replace, medical or psychiatric treatment.
3. She thought the normal people who could drink casually were lucky.
4. It is also based on real experiences and successful stories, so many recovering addicts find the tips to be actually helpful.

Smashed was a ground breaking novel, shocking people with the brazenly delivered truths experienced by young women all over the country. Zailckas’ story is similar to the millions of youths who engage in binge drinking at dangerously young age. Throughout the course of the book, Zailckas reveals the underlying emotional pain and lack of confidence that she tried to express through excessive drinking.

It might seem that addiction is behind when a person is in stage two of recovery. However, the new life has just begun and a person needs some guidance on how to rebuild their life. This is where this book will be a lifesaver for both the individuals in the recovery process and their family and friends. This author has written numerous books and has years of education adult children of alcoholics and experience in the field of counseling and improving interpersonal relationships. Probably the least-known work of the Brontë sisters, by the least-known sister, Anne’s second and last novel was published to great success in 1848. Helen ultimately escapes her marriage and pretends to be a widow, earning a living as an artist to care for herself and her young son.

Ann Dowsett Johnston masterfully weaves personal story, interviews, and sociological research together to create a compelling, informative, and even heartbreaking reality about drinking and womanhood. Written with courage and candor this book leaves you ready to push against a society suggesting alcohol is the solution to women’s problems. A 1996 bestseller, symptoms of alcohol withdrawal Caroline Knapp paints a vivid picture of substance use and recovery that every reader can appreciate, whether you struggle with substance use or not. Knapp writes elegantly about her 20+ years of ‘high-functioning drinking’. Winning career accolades by day and drinking at night, Knapp brings you to the netherworld of alcohol use disorder.

Then I told myself it was because I was a journalist working the night shift. Prolific, brilliant memoirist Mary Karr shines a light on the dark years she spent descending into alcoholism and drug use as a young writer, wife, and mother. 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. In his follow-up to his first memoir, Tweak, which dealt with his journey into meth addiction, Sheff details his struggle to stay clean. In and out of rehab, he falls into relapse, engaging in toxic relationships and other self-destructive behaviors that threaten to undo the hard-won progress he’s made. This book reads like a conversation, and teaches us to get curious.

This book may also help you see sobriety as a gift you’re giving to your body. 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 author is a comedian with a sort of funny dark sense of humor. He talks about the 12 steps in his book and explains everything in a really blunt and kind of deep, philosophical way. In a way, this book is an interesting combination of humor and deep philosophy. If you are seeking drug and alcohol related addiction rehab for yourself or a loved one, the SoberNation.com hotline is a confidential and convenient solution.

The first 100 pages blew my mind and I found myself getting excited to read another chapter of this book every night before going to sleep. For a long time I felt tortured by the mystery of why some people are alcoholics and others aren’t. Jerry Stahl was a writer with significant and successful screenwriting credits — Dr. Caligari, Twin Peaks, Moonlighting, and more. But despite that success, Stahl’s heroin habit began to consume him, derailing his career and destroying his health until one final, intense crisis inspired him to get clean. If you wish to contact a specific rehab facility then find a specific rehab facility using our treatment locator page or visit SAMHSA.gov.

Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more. Dove “Birdie” Randolph is doing her best to be a perfect daughter. She’s focusing on her schoolwork and is on track to finish high school at the top of her class. But then she falls for Booker, and her aunt Charlene—who has been in and out of treatment for alcoholism for decades—moves into the apartment above her family’s hair salon. The Revolution of Birdie Randolph is a beautiful look at the effects of alcoholism on friends and family members in the touching way only Brandy Colbert can master.

Few people know that the actor Joe Manganiello had a fifth-a-day whiskey habit in his mid-20s. I used this book for motivation to quit drinking, even though the subject of addiction is barely discussed. Between this book and Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, you’ll have some high-level diet and exercise programs to model and remold into your own. This book can provide great value for the person who has quit drinking and still does not feel good on a daily basis. Anxiety, depression, and cravings are not a sustainable way of life, nor are they inevitable symptoms of a permanent disease.