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. 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. 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.
Drink: The Intimate Relationship between Women and Alcohol by Ann Dowsett Johnston
Sober celebrities, reality stars in rehab and the sudden ubiquity of mocktail recipes… the culture is shifting, and abstinence is in. Peak Covid saw people giving into excess where alcohol was concerned, and the rise of sobriety following the pandemic seems straight out of a ‘nature is healing’ meme. The ‘sober curious‘ movement has spawned non-alcoholic bars in cities as different as Nashville and New York, zero-proof liquors and a whole lot of memoirs written by addicts in recovery. When I first read this book over ten years ago it felt like I was reading my own journal (if my journal was written in incredibly eloquent prose).
Best Quit Lit Books and Sobriety Memoirs to Inspire Your Recovery
Reading this book was the beginning of a new perspective for me. It got me thinking the one thing I never wanted to be true… maybe it is the alcohol that’s making me so miserable? https://ecosoberhouse.com/ Ditlevsen’s trilogy, by contrast, plunges us into the perspective of a succession of her former selves. When she’s a child, we’re presented with the world as a child might see it.
- If you struggle with anything related to body image, you won’t regret this read.
- I found this book uncomfortable at times and very funny at other times.
- Author William Porter uses the science of the brain and psychology to help you understand the effects of alcohol on your body and mind.
- Tara Westover’s memoir shook the world when it came out in 2018, and has since spent more than 125 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List.
- Coulter shares her struggles with alcohol use and also the challenges of getting sober.
by Augusten Burroughs
I started reading addiction memoirs in college, well before I admitted to having an alcohol use disorder. Why else would I have been mesmerized by When a Man Loves a Woman or 28 Days in my early 20s? These movies and books let me know I was not alone, that there were other people walking around who drank like I did. Today, some of my favorite works of fiction are those which manage to portray the complex multitudes of ways in which alcoholism affects people—not just the addicts themselves, but their friends, family, and co-workers. 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.
- In the year following, she meditates on grief and the loss of her 40-year relationship.
- Life in an academic institution can be a curiously intense experience.
- Van der Kolk describes our inner resilience to manage the worst of life’s circumstances with our innate survival instinct.
- A stunning debut novel about a short but intense friendship between two girls that ends in tragedy, Marlena pinpoints both what it feels like to be the addict and what it’s like to be the friend of one.
- Why else would I have been mesmerized by When a Man Loves a Woman or 28 Days in my early 20s?
For now I’ll mention one more convention of addiction memoirs, although it differs slightly from the others because it’s more directly concerned with how they’re read than with how they’re written. The pleasures we expect from the form range from the edifying (empathy, inspiration) to the unseemly (voyeurism, vicarious transgression) to mention just a few. But many readers —like the one I was during my time in rehab in 2015—also come to it seeking something often considered antithetical to art.
- This is a self-help book by a licensed therapist that braids together anonymized client stories, personal narrative, psychological tools, and brain research.
- Sometimes, a slow realization of enough being enough is all it takes to start your recovery.
- For these reasons, in many addiction memoirs the end is the weakest part.
We Can Help You Change Your Story
She highlights not only her relationship to alcohol, but also key takeaways from her many attempts to get sober. 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.
Dry is a heartbreaking memoir of Augusten Burrough’s story of addiction, beginning with an intervention organized by his coworkers and boss and his first bout of sobriety. 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.
“Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol” by Ann Dowsett Johnston
20) A Happier Hour by Rebecca WellerAt 39 years of age – and a health coach, no less – Weller knew better than to drink several bottles of wine each week. Her increasingly dysfunctional relationship with alcohol had to stop, but after decades of social drinking, she was terrified of what that might mean. She takes us through her journey of recovery in this moving, inspiring story about giving up something you think you love to live the life you truly want. Often, when we think of books about addiction and best alcoholic memoirs 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.
Drunk–ish by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor
As a result, the hot-house atmosphere of a university campus or boarding school presents an excellent backdrop for novels exploring ambition, power dynamics, crushes, and sexual crises. Here, we’ve pulled together a list of campus novels that have been recommended on Five Books over the years, via our interviews with literary scholars, bestselling authors and book prize judges. All in all, this is an excellent quit lit story for those interested in an eye-opening perspective on alcohol’s role in our society today. This powerful book narrates his ups and downs, setbacks, and unimaginable challenges in recovery. Ultimately, Augusten tells the story of how his most difficult experiences led him to getting clean and helping others.
