From painfully honest stories to science-based tips, there’s a title on this list that’s sure to inspire and motivate you or someone in your life. Although I think they can all be considered addiction memoirs, and share a familial resemblance with other examples of that form, none of them feel remotely imprisoned by its conventions. And yet—even though each of these books goes its own way, never hesitating to flout a trope or trample a norm to serve its story—they don’t go in terror of the conventions either. Where the story they have to tell echoes others, they let us hear that echo. One characteristic I think I discern in the best addiction memoir is a certain humility that doesn’t strive after innovation for its own sake. Serious addiction has a way of annihilating your sense of exceptionalism, stripping away your autonomy and character, and reducing you to the sum of your cravings.
- There’s no award for “Most Sobriety Memoirs Read,” so read them for yourself — let their wisdom be its own award (I can feel your eye rolls. I’m sorry.).
- The result was a tale whose bracing darkness is ultimately redeemed not by its perfunctorily hopeful ending but by the extraordinary force and beauty of its telling.
- Next you’ve chosen to recommend Tove Ditlevsen’s Dependency, the third book in her Copenhagen Trilogy.
- Have you noticed that our world is increasingly obsessed with drinking?
- Where the story they have to tell echoes others, they let us hear that echo.
- Dr. Maté shares the powerful insight that substance use is, in many cases, a survival mechanism.
Jane’s Addiction Concert Ends Abruptly After Perry Farrell Throws a Punch at Dave Navarro, Is Forced Offstage by Crew
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. Margo Jefferson grew up among the Black elite, where everyone distanced themselves https://ecosoberhouse.com/ from white people but also from Black people not in their community. Negroland is her take on race, sex, and American culture in a world full of contradictions. After Kitchen Confidential, food memoirs blew up, with food memoir now a popular subgenre.
Lifechanging Books on Addiction & Recovery
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.
Memoirs About Alcoholism
While self-help books are not a solution for long-term recovery, they can be very helpful for your “emotional recovery”. Having been in recovery for many years, and best alcoholic memoirs working here at Shatterproof, I often get asked to recommend books about addiction. So here’s a list of my all-time favorite reads about substance use disorders.
We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview. Early recovery has the quality of vigorous exercise, as though each repetition of a painful moment… serves to build up emotional muscle. Next you’ve chosen to recommend Tove Ditlevsen’s Dependency, the third book in her Copenhagen Trilogy. It was first published in Danish in the 1970s, but has only recently been translated into English by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favela Goldman. Blackout shows how you can grow into the person you want to be and leave alcohol in the past—no matter where you are now.
One hint that the author and protagonist of A Fan’s Notes (1968) are really the same person is that they are both called Frederick Exley. All these books might have been published as memoir in a less stigmatising age. Her mother and manager, Diana, started drinking again and faced a number of mental health-related struggles. And JoJo’s record label, Blackground Records, trapped her in a restrictive seven-year limbo when it lost its distribution deal but retained rights to her existing recordings. Meanwhile, JoJo’s father Joel — whom her mother met while attending AA meetings and divorced early in her childhood — came in and out of her life. Prozac Nation is one of the most influential memoirs about mental illness, often credited as one of the first modern memoirs in the wide-ranging genre we know today.
- JoJo noted that she isn’t currently sober, but she has developed a healthier relationship with the substances she once struggled with to the point of operating a vehicle while blackout drunk.
- I think a trace of that worldview finds expression—again, in the best addiction memoirs—in the form’s tendency to value the authentically commonplace over sensational performance.
- Only a handful of the addiction memoirs of recent decades are also, in my view, singular works of art.
- In it, Annie talks about her own experiences with addiction while keeping things deeply relatable to anyone who’s questioned alcohol’s role in their life.
- It’s popularly assigned in English classes and also has been banned several times in schools.
- Although previous literary history had portrayed a number of addicts, only a very small number could be found outside fiction—although some well known examples were only fictional in a nominal sense.
Jason Kelce May Have Accidentally Revealed Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce Made a Massive Relationship Step
A person of extraordinary intellect, Heather King is a lawyer and writer/commentator for NPR — as well as a recovering alcoholic who spent years descending from functional alcoholism to barely functioning at all. From graduating cum laude from law school despite her excessive drinking to languishing in dive bars, King presents a clear-eyed look at her past and what brought her out of the haze of addiction. Elie Wiesel was a teenager when he and his family were forced to Auschwitz concentration camp. Night is a brutal reminder of what evil looks like — and one of the most influential memoirs of human history.
Having said that, I did—while reading Ditlevsen’s Dependency—occasionally need to put the book down and take a few deep breaths. Even the second time around I found it so viscerally powerful that at times I was overwhelmed. It was every bit as gruelling and heartbreaking as the truth required it to be. And I can’t think of a better compliment to a writer of addiction memoir – or, indeed, any writer – than that.
