The best memoirs of drug and alcohol addiction

Koren Zalickas began drinking at a young age — 14 years old. In his follow-up to his first memoir, Tweak, which dealt with his journey into meth addiction, Sheff details his struggle to stay clean. In and out of rehab, he falls into relapse, engaging in toxic relationships and other self-destructive behaviors that threaten to undo the hard-won progress he’s made. There’s a long, beautiful history of writers chronicling how they’ve dealt with alcoholism and addiction.

• Ahead, see the 15 stories of struggle, failure, recovery, and grace that have moved us the most.
• Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to those charges.
• Ever the feminist, she found that women and other oppressed people don’t need the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous, but a deeper understanding of their own identities.
• Stoicism is an ancient philosophy that believes self-control, courage, justice, and wisdom are the keys to happiness.

Lit by Mary Karr

• Most notably, it’s a brutally honest — and hilarious — reflection on the late writer’s path to sobriety.
• 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.
• When something awful happens to us, our way to cope is to turn off and even turn against ourselves, as a method of resilience.
• Author William Porter uses the science of the brain and psychology to help you understand the effects of alcohol on your body and mind.

Alcohol memoirs that document the author’s struggle with booze have become a sub-genre of their own. The books on this list will stock your bookshelves with hilarious, shocking, and tragic stories about the downward spiral of alcohol addiction. Addiction and recovery memoirs are great reminders that you are not alone and that many, many others have gone down the difficult road to sobriety.

The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober: Discovering a Happy, Healthy, Wealthy Alcohol-Free Life by Catherine Gray

One of the first of its kind, Drink opens our eyes to the connection between drinking, trauma and the impossible quest to ‘have it all’ that many women experience. Ann Dowsett Johnston masterfully weaves personal story, interviews, and sociological research together to create a compelling, informative, and even heartbreaking reality about drinking and womanhood. Written with courage and candor this book leaves you ready to push against a society suggesting alcohol is the solution to women’s problems. If I have any faith now, it’s in literature’s ability to help us redeem even life’s darkest realities by bringing them into the light. Most people can have one or two cocktails at a work event, or a glass of wine with dinner. But for many alcoholics and binge drinkers, one drink is too many, and a thousand is never enough.

• But there are times when, say, I’ll go back to a city where I used to live, or hit a certain season.
• And she had an almost miraculous ability to portray her broken family with wit and love, without ever flinching from pain.
• I said this convention concerned reading more directly than writing, but—since all good writing involves deep sensitivity to the reader’s experience—the two things are ultimately inseparable.
• 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.

White Logic

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. I had to read this book in small doses because it was so intense. Bessel writes about trauma with great compassion and empathy. Through reading this book I came to better understand myself, my body’s physical reactions, and my mental health.

The books I picked & why

Life doesn’t provide moments of satisfying narrative resolution. How do you craft an ending that makes narrative sense but which feels complex and inconclusive in the way life so often is? Many addiction memoirs evince a desire to repay the reader for all the dark places the story has taken them with a thumpingly joyous ending. For these reasons, in many addiction memoirs the end is the weakest part.

Discover more from mind remake project

For more resources in sobriety, online alcohol treatment programs like Ria Health can help as well. Ria Health is a smartphone-based program that assists people in reaching their unique alcohol-related goals, whether that means cutting back or quitting for good. Alcohol Explained is a spectacularly helpful guide on alcohol and alcoholism. Author William Porter uses the science of the brain and psychology to help you understand the effects of alcohol on your body and mind. He also offers step-by-step instructions for starting recovery and sticking with it. But as you go through her story, you see what she means.

Powerful Memoirs About Mental Illness & Addiction

She looks after her children, enjoys drinks with friends, and is a successful writer. But she recognizes her relationship with alcohol is different than that of the casual-drinking moms in her friend group. When she realizes sobriety is her only path forward, she keeps a diary of her road to recovery, from finding a sponsor to discovering a new social life not centered around alcohol. Wilhelmson’s story proves that alcoholism can take many forms. Bryony puts her family, career and future at risk before a stint in rehab, loads of AA meetings and self-discovery help her to become a mother, partner and person she can be proud of. The writers who have poured their souls into these memoirs about drinking are, for the most part, on the road to recovery.

Next we have Mary Karr’s Lit, which is also the third book in a trilogy; it followed The Liars’ Club and Cherry. It’s a memoir of her addiction to alcohol, and her subsequent recovery, and her conversion to Catholicism. 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.

The Empathy Exams author’s stunning book juxtaposes her own relationship to addiction with stories of literary legends like Raymond Carver, and imbues it with rich cultural history. The result is a definitive treatment of the American recovery movement—a memoir in the subgenre best alcoholic memoirs like no other. The images cited in the letter date back to a time when Hunter Biden was in the throes of drug and alcohol addiction. In his 2021 memoir, «Beautiful Things,» Hunter Biden described frequent drug-infused binges that often involved sexual interactions with women.

Louise Foxcroft on The History of Medicine and Addiction

In the book, Holly Whitaker speaks on the irony of a world that glorifies alcohol yet looks down on people who get sick from using it. It’s a witty, straightforward tale of the shenanigans, shame, and confusion that occurs in the morning-afters. Sarah also explores how alcohol affected her relationships with her friends, family, and even her cat. Whether you drink often, are newly sober, or anywhere in between, it can be deeply inspiring to hear a story from someone who’s experienced exactly what you’re going through. This book is highly recommended for anyone who, like me, is or was terrified of living a boring life. This book will inspire anyone looking for fun and adventure to create incredible memories while living alcohol-free.