8 Books About Sobriety to Help You Drink Less, or Quit Altogether The New York Times
Often, when we think of books about addiction and specifically alcoholism (in my case), we think of important, tell-all works of nonfiction. Memoirs like Sarah Hepola’s Blackout, Augusten Burroughs’ Dry, and Drunk Mom by Jowita Bydlowska are recent, searing examples of first person accounts of being drunk and then, eventually, being sober. There are also the self-help books, the AA manuals, the well-meaning but often dry (no pun, and so on) tomes to help one acquire clarity and consistency in a life where addiction often creates chaos and disorder. 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. This is a lesser known series of essays on the intersection of alcohol and womanhood. The author, Kristi Coulter, engages the reader with her deep insight and quick wit.
Sarah also explores how alcohol affected her relationships with her friends, family, and even her cat. 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. Ahead, see the 15 stories of struggle, failure, recovery, and grace that have moved us the most.
blackout By Sarah Hepola
Plus, it’s sure to impress your guests at your next dinner party. Reading We are the Luckiest by Laura McKowen can quite possibly save your life. For anyone hiding in the shadows of shame, this book is a guiding light.
Then I insisted the daily drinking was just part of adulthood. The esteemed and late New York Times columnist David Carr turned his journalistic eye on his own life in this memoir, investigating his own past as a cocaine addict and sifting through muddied memories to discover the truth. 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.
Addiction Memoirs from Rock Stars, Parents, & Hollywood Celebrities The Reader’s Shelf
You can learn more about addiction and relate to authors through their stories, reminding yourself that you aren’t alone in your journey. This sets her on a 30-year quest to uncover the hidden lives and unfulfilled dreams of her mother and grandmother. In this coming-of-middle-age memoir, the author comes to realize that the passion for travel and for literature that has fueled her life’s journey is a gift that was passed down to her by the very role models she was…
show more. Karr arrived with a unique literary voice that combined rich Texan and burst of lyricism.
This is a must read for anyone passionate about exploring their relationship with alcohol and the role a patriarchal system has played in rising rates of unhealthy substance use in America. In her early 20s, writer Jamison (The Empathy Exams) started drinking daily to ease her chronic shyness and deal with the stress of getting her master’s degree at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Identifying with accomplished writers whose creativity seemed to thrive in a haze of intoxication, she fell further into the depths of alcoholism before hitting rock bottom. After failed attempts at sobriety, she found a combination of treatments—attending meetings, sharing her story and the 12-step AA program—that worked for her. Despite being published less than a year ago, Jamison’s memoir is a gritty and honest must-read.
Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol by Holly Whitaker
Reading her book is like sharing a cup of coffee with your wise best friend. She’s brilliant in writing and shares many actionable tips and strategies. In Recovery, Russell Brand shares an amusing yet valuable https://ecosoberhouse.com/ story of addiction and the path to sobriety. As a wildly famous celebrity, he struggled with more than just alcohol. But it’s easy to resonate with his emotions surrounding addiction, no matter your vice.
- The result is a definitive treatment of the American recovery movement—a memoir in the subgenre like no other.
- 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.
- For one kind of author, helping the reader is the whole point of writing an addiction memoir; for another, even to consider doing so would be aesthetically fatal.
- Sometimes, those conversations can be quite difficult.
- Quit Like a Woman is her informative and relatable guidebook to breaking an addiction to alcohol.
Twenty years ago today, I woke up from a typical alcohol-induced blackout in an apartment I did not recognize in an unfamiliar Boston neighborhood. I stared at the ceiling with a pit in my stomach, a void in my soul, a dead cell phone battery, and an inner knowing that I would never best alcoholic memoirs let myself feel this way again. I gathered my few belongings from the night before and shamefully walked to the Boston “T” to get back home. When I arrived, reeking of booze from the evening before and makeup strewn down my face, I was confronted by two of my female roommates.
beautiful Boy By David Sheff
Life doesn’t provide moments of satisfying narrative resolution. How do you craft an ending that makes narrative sense but which feels complex and inconclusive in the way life so often is? 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. Most are forgettable and forgotten, but some accomplished authors—like Caroline Knapp and Sarah Hepola—have created very good books by bringing real skill to the standard formula.
- That started my path towards eventual freedom from alcohol.
- Having just been released from rehab nine months earlier, his relapse cost him his home, money, career and almost his life.
- Based on Fisher’s hugely successful one-woman show, Wishful Drinking is the story of growing up in Hollywood royalty, battling addiction, and dealing with manic depression.
- 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.
