Drug Memoir A List 171 books

Lewis provides a description of life in recovery that I relate to myself; that sober life is not a life of deprivation, but one of fulfillment, continued growth, and personal development. A captivating story of a highly accomplished well-known professional in the spotlight who was brave enough to share her story. Elizabeth Vargas takes off her perfectly poised reporter mask and shows you the authentic person behind the anchor desk. She shares her personal lifelong struggle with anxiety, which led to excessive substance use, rehab, and her ultimate triumph into recovery. “Rewired” is not just a book about addiction—it’s a guide to reclaiming one’s life and discovering the joy of living in alignment with one’s true values and aspirations.

A brilliant, nuanced study in desire, self-actualization, and recovery, Melissa Febos’s debut focuses on her time as a dominatrix in NYC while studying at The New School and battling a heroin addiction. One of the things I admire most about Febos is her generosity, the palpable love with which she writes about herself, her gentle self-awareness. With measured curiosity, she challenges the notion that a woman like that can’t abandon herself and others, that she can’t be a sex worker, that she can’t be an addict, that any of these is guaranteed to beget the other. Formally masterful and inventive, The Chronology of Water features poetic, non-linear prose that flows in and out of Yuknavitch’s experiences with parental violence and neglect, child loss, unmet expectations, and drugs and alcohol. The author, once a promising competitive swimmer with a scholarship, leaves behind a dysfunctional home only to fall into known destructive patterns, experimenting with self-destructive forms of escape. Reeling from a bad relationship and the loss of a child, the author enrolls in school and finds herself in a writing workshop that changes the course of her life.

Pamela Anderson – Love Pamela

Ann Dowsett Johnston brilliantly weaves her own story of recovery with in-depth research on the alarming rise of risky drinking among women. The marketing strategies employed to sell booze to women are as alarming as the skyrocketing number of women who qualify as having alcohol use disorders. Ann’s book is such a unique and insightful combination of personal experience and scientific research. Best known for penning the woman-in-the-attic-focused prequel to Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, English writer Jean Rhys was always a little out of step.

Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol

Terry achieved long-term sobriety at one time, and she helped many women. It made me realize the pain I would have brought to my parents if they had lost me. I did many things I am deeply ashamed of, and reading her book taught me that I am not alone. But she was also reckless, often finding herself soberly apologizing for things she didn’t remember doing, waking up next to men she didn’t remember meeting and caring for bruises she didn’t remember getting. Subtitled “Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget,” Hepola’s debut memoir is a vulnerable story about refocusing her attention from finding her next drink to learning how to love herself without liquid enhancements. Here, Nikki shares the diary entries—some poetic, some scatterbrained, some bizarre—of those dark times.

Louise Foxcroft on The History of Medicine and Addiction

I almost wanted to snap it shut, but instead finished it in one day and have read it at least three more times since. Knapp so perfectly describes the emotional landscape of addiction, and as a literary study it’s as perfect a memoir as I’ve ever read. I often think about what it took to publish this when she did, in the 90’s, as a female and a journalist in Boston. I compiled a short list of powerful addiction memoirs to add to your reading list. Even if you aren’t in recovery, the struggles and emotions of these authors can help you feel less alone in this world. Recovery isn’t just about quitting a substance; it’s also about reconnecting with oneself.

But the experiences of those addicted differ vastly, based on race, class, the substances in question, the time and place. Jamison set out to write a different sort of addiction memoir, and she wrote one of the most exhaustively researched, lyrical, and thoughtful additions to that canon in recent years. The book flags only when she reaches for universality instead of focuses on writing her own story, which is already an expansive account of a woman confronting her addiction and her obsession with writers who drink. In this post, we’ve put together nine of the best addiction memoirs and quit lit books for you to check out.

This Much is True’ by Miriam Margolyes, published by John Murray

Every year, the judges of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction draw up a shortlist of books that made them laugh out loud. We asked the novelist Stephanie Merritt, one of the 2025 judges, to talk us through the eight books in the running for the title of the funniest book of the year. I very consciously looked to Karr for inspiration in how to write candidly yet lovingly about an imperfect family.

She is plagued by waking terrors, violent fantasies, and crippling emotional breakdowns. Her life in shambles, it becomes clear that she is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Her bewilderment about this sudden loss of control is magnified by the intensity of her feelings for Nico, a French soldier she https://ecosoberhouse.com/ met in Port-au-Prince and with whom she connected instantly and deeply.

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks

You’ll find stories of struggle, redemption, and growth as individuals navigate life’s challenges with God’s guidance. These memoirs highlight the transformative power of belief, showcasing how faith can lead to resilience and hope. They encourage you to reflect on your own experiences and deepen your understanding of spirituality, ultimately inspiring you to embrace your unique path in life.

Clare Pooley left her position at one of the world’s largest advertising agencies to focus on raising her three children. What was meant to be a positive and happy change led to depression, which she self-medicated with drinking, eventually consuming over a bottle of wine a day. Burroughs thought he was managing to keep it all together as a suit-wearing, hard-partying Manhattanite until he landed in rehab at the bequest of his employers. With the same wit and candor found in his other popular works, we follow the writer from a rehab reality check back to the bustling city, where he must learn to navigate life on the wagon. To vote on books not in the list or best alcoholic memoirs books you couldn’t find in the list, you can click on the tab add books to this list and then choose from your books, or simply search. To vote on existing books from the list, beside each book there is a link vote for this book clicking it will add that book to your votes.

• From Nic’s early experimentation with drugs to his full-blown addiction to methamphetamine, Sheff paints a vivid and harrowing portrait of the impact addiction can have on families.
• As a privileged girl from a family of colonists in early 20th-century Dominica, she clashed with her environment, her peers, and her parents.
• Home-schooled and never taken to a doctor, she didn’t even have a birth certificate until she was nine years old.
• The result is a definitive treatment of the American recovery movement—a memoir in the subgenre like no other.

It begins with him hospitalised after an explosion in his bowel, setting the tone for the rest of the book’s confessional tone. The themes Athill explores with her frank and heroin addiction vivid prose are timeless and relatable, in the same way as a Jane Austen romantic comedy. Though Athill spent her career editing and publishing the books of authors like Jean Rhys and Philip Roth, her memoirs deserve to sit among the greats. Domineering, traumatised by the war and often cruel, Win opposes Orr leaving for university, and their tumultuous relationship creates the tension in the book. Meanwhile, Orr questions the power imbalance between her subservient mother and dominant father and how traditional gender roles were encouraged in her family.

This Close to Happy: A Reckoning with Depression by Daphne Merkin

Many readers find that authenticity and vulnerability are essential factors in selecting Christian memoirs. When you immerse yourself in a memoir that reflects honest struggles and failures, it allows you to connect deeply with the author’s journey of faith. You want to read about real-life experiences that resonate with your own, and vulnerability in storytelling creates empathy and understanding. The journey through addiction to recovery is a deeply personal experience, with no two people going though the same process to reach sobriety.