Top Ten Books About Addiction 2022
From her first taste and throughout her young adult life, her increasing dependence on alcohol would best addiction memoirs lead to hospital trips, blackouts, and dangerous and destructive tendencies that eventually helped her see she should quit drinking for good. Customers appreciate the book’s insights, particularly its engaging explanations of neurological concepts and how addiction affects the brain. You have tried so many times without success (often), I just can’t see how you’re going to pull it off, and I’m waiting for it with every page turned. If you wish to contact a specific rehab facility then find a specific rehab facility using our treatment locator page or visit SAMHSA.gov.
The Recovering by Leslie Jamison
Second, they contain sections describing the lurid drama and dreadful effects of addiction in unsparing detail. Unvarnished accounts of the havoc and disaster of addiction, whether played for farce or pathos, are as reliably found in the most artistically ambitious addiction memoirs as in the least. Meanwhile the reader is tacitly licensed to enjoy all this mayhem and calamity with a degree of voyeuristic relish and, equally, to take a vicarious pleasure in the author’s recklessness and transgression. Based on Fisher’s hugely successful one-woman show, Wishful alcoholism symptoms Drinking is the story of growing up in Hollywood royalty, battling addiction, and dealing with manic depression. Her first memoir is an inside look at her famous parents’ marriage and her own tumultuous love affairs (including her on-again, off-again relationship with Paul Simon).
Mental: Lithium, Love, and Losing My Mind by Jamie Lowe
Former “20/20” anchor Elizabeth Vargas shares her story of anxiety and alcohol use disorder in this compelling memoir. Between Breaths reveals how she lived in denial and secrecy for years before finally entering rehab and a life of sobriety. Jowita Bydlowska is three years into her sobriety when she becomes a mother. What was supposed to be a joyous moment triggers a relapse when, on a whim, she has a glass of champagne to celebrate the birth of her first child.
Alcohol Recovery Coaching Transformed My Life
When she’s a child, we’re presented with the world as a child might see it. When she’s hooked on Demetrol, we perceive events through the distorted viewpoint of an addict. This is the kind of myopic or unreliable narrator we encounter frequently in novels – conspicuously naïve or self-delusive, and unchaperoned by a consolingly wise authorial presence—but almost never in memoir.
- If you struggle with alcoholism or think you might have issues with alcohol, Annie Grace’s This Naked Mind is a practical listen to help you reconsider what drinking does for you and understand what recovery can mean.
- If this book resonates with you, be sure to check out Grace’s podcast of the same name, This Naked Mind, where she and guests continue to dissect alcohol’s grasp on our lives and culture.
- “If you’ve ever wanted to know what an exceptional critical mind looks like on drugs, read White Out.
- Like many addictions, Garza’s will get worse before she seeks help and finally comes to terms with her obsessions.
- Next we have Mary Karr’s Lit, which is also the third book in a trilogy; it followed The Liars’ Club and Cherry.
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.
Reading is so much more than just a temporary distraction from the reality of your daily life. The books you choose can help you gain a new perspective on your own struggles or better understand what the people you care about are going through. If you or a loved one is struggling with addiction, MATClinics is here to help. We have outpatient treatment centers across Maryland filled with dedicated and compassionate staff. Parents often deal with feelings of helplessness, frustration, guilt and more as they watch their child battle addiction.
Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction, Maia Szalavitz
Learn about career opportunities as a clinician, case manager or medical assistant, along with above-average compensation, the latest technology, and a bright, well-appointed working environment. Such an unpredictable, ever-changing mixture of strengths, weaknesses, suffering, defeat, pride, shame, and even humour. These memoirs epitomize the complexities and virtues of humans facing and eventually overcoming astonishing challenges. I pick them up in my spare time, packed up on my Kindle for train rides and class breaks, or late at night when I’ve got time to myself.
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
At the late age of twenty-eight and after nineteen rejections, he is finally accepted to Harvard Medical School, where he gains purpose, a life, and some control over his condition. There are the manic episodes, during which he felt burdened with saving the world, juxtaposed against the real-world responsibilities of running a pediatric practice. Joseph Naus beats the odds by overcoming a difficult childhood and becoming a successful civil trial lawyer. Still, his insatiable desire for alcohol and sex upends his entire life on one fateful night.
