This book is great for anyone who struggles to hold up the mirror to themselves and confront the parts they don’t like reflected. This is a memoir by Augusten Burroughs of Running With Scissors fame. She takes the reader on a very humbling journey through her recovery and experience with AA where she (rightfully so) gets knocked off her high horse and into a reality that I believe saves her from herself. In a brilliant narrative style, she constantly flips back and forth between her personal story and the history of the alcoholic creatives who came before her, their lives intersecting in fascinating ways. This is the second addiction book I read at the beginning of my sobriety, and I loved it for vastly different reasons. Knapp was a writer by trade, which makes her story all the more captivating.
- Through her candid and relatable storytelling, Pooley provides a beacon of hope for anyone struggling with alcoholism or affected by it.
- Research shows that listening to or reading stories affects our brains.
- The Night of the Gun by David Carr is a gripping memoir that delves into the author’s own struggles with addiction and the impact of his alcoholic parents.
It Will Never Happen to Me: Growing Up with Addiction as Youngsters, Adolescents, Adults
At the age of 15, Cat Marnell began to unknowingly “murder her life” when she became hooked on the ADHD medication prescribed to her by her psychiatrist father. It got me thinking the one thing I never wanted to be true… maybe it is the alcohol that’s https://minal.squaredealmedia.in/2021/10/14/expert-guide-how-to-handle-and-prevent-ptsd-2/ making me so miserable? That’s the thorny question at the center of this moving and courageous memoir authored by the son of Robert S. McNamara, Kennedy’s architect of the Vietnam War. In this conflicted son’s telling, a complicated man comes into intimate view, as does the “mixture of love and rage” at the heart of their relationship. This book is part of a group that launched the “sober curious” movement.
This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life by Annie Grace
It’s not just about counting calories but a question of looking at the whole health profile of a beverage; its sugar content, whether it’s hydrating and whether what you add to it can provide any nutritive value. Her childlike observations of the world, the petty annoyances that come of living in close quarters and hope even against the worst of circumstances make it a must-read for us all. Anyone who really believes that all you have to do to get ahead is to work hard and pull yourself up by your bootstraps needs to read this seminal memoir ASAP. It’s an eye-opening story of a single mom who’s doing her best and still falling short, thanks to drug addiction social forces beyond her control.
The Ultimate 2024 Updated List of Must-Read Teen Mental Health Books
- She’s funny and self-deprecating in a refreshing way, but also real.
- She started sneaking sips from her parents’ wine glasses as a kid, and went through adolescence drinking more and more.
- Carr understands addiction and the personal destruction that leads you to it.
- I’m going to share with you my personal favorites that helped me get through those first thirty days of sobriety to where I am today – six years alcohol-free.
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. The fact that even a great artist like Ditlevsen can capitulate to such dictates, if only once, demonstrates how powerful they are. The various accidental similarities between these books began, before long, to harden into a blueprint, which countless books have faithfully reproduced.
The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning
Many people would be happy to drink something else but the majority of British and American social culture is centered around alcohol, so as this book describes, we drink it to maintain the status quo. Much like books by Catherine Gray, Holly Whitaker’s Quit Like A Woman is a favorite of many of the experts who have gone through the process of giving up drinking or cutting back themselves. This book, BACP therapist Katerina best alcoholic memoirs Georgiou, says “is the literary version of your friend at a party, a few drinks in on your arrival, showing you what lies ahead.”
- You may have covered this in high school, but it’s always worth a reread.
- By opening up about their struggles with substance abuse, they also opened a Pandora’s box of how differently we, as a society, view women who drink.
- If you’ve read and enjoyed Annie’s books but are still struggling with quitting alcohol, she does offer courses and training to help people quit drinking.
- She is a Christian, as am I, and I often battled in my head with being a Christian and being an alcoholic.
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 Sober Diaries follows the narrative of author Clare Pool’s journey in quitting drinking. The book covers her whole first-year experience of sobriety, as well as the unexpected challenges she faced along the way.