Erin Khar and Other Women Memoirists Are Rewriting the Addiction Canon

The book’s authors do a great job of helping the reader understand how their experiences have profoundly impacted the affected person’s relationships with others. Others may believe the ideas and suggestions do not apply to them and discredit any insight best alcoholic memoirs or solutions. Think about a person who reads the books Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous while in detox or actively using or drinking alcohol. Would the book read the same way as it was when the person is healthy and ten years clean and sober?

Many famous musicians struggled with various addictions, but many were also able to recover and went on to produce a lot of great music instead of falling victim to the stereotype. Their stories serve to provide strength and inspiration to others on a path of healing and health. Dr Gabor Maté advocates for compassion towards people struggling with addiction, as sick people trying to get well the best way they know how. The simplicity of this idea makes so much sense and is often forgotten in everything from AA to drug law. You don’t need to agree with all of Gabor Maté’s theories to see that he has brought a level of hope and humanity to the conversation surrounding addiction. In this honest discussion of mental health, the founder of Therapy for Women explores our reasons for drinking alcohol – and the benefits of taking a break…. Based on the principles behind “Steps Six and Seven”, Drop the Rock combines personal stories, practical advice, and powerful insights to help listeners move forward in recovery…. Are currently struggling with drug or alcohol addiction, you are not alone. In this darkly comic and wrenchingly honest story, Smith describes how her circumstances conspired with her predisposition to depression and self-medication in an environment ripe for addiction to flourish. For more resources in sobriety, online alcohol treatment programs like Ria Health can help as well.

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Debut novel from Nico Walker who wrote it while incarcerated for bank robbery. The honest and accurate portrayal of addiction and withdrawal has led to it being called the “first great novel of the opioid epidemic”. Often, when we think of books about addiction and specifically alcoholism , 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 tomes to help one acquire clarity and consistency in a life where addiction often creates chaos and disorder. Hen we hear the word “recovery”, especially alongside “literature”, we tend to think of books on alcoholism or drug addiction.

I walk through the front door of my hotel, into the bright squint of the lobby. It’s that time of night when every floor has a banana peel, and if I’m not careful, I might find my face against the ground, my hands braced beside me, and I’ll have to explain to the concierge how clumsy and hilarious I am. Mismanagement of opioid medication by medical professionals can have life-threatening outcomes. Travis Rieder learned this after his doctor prescribed opioids following several surgeries. Enjoy strange, diverting work from The Commuter on Mondays, absorbing fiction from Recommended Reading on Wednesdays, and a roundup of our best work of the week on Fridays. We publish your favorite authors—even the ones you haven’t read yet.

Beautiful Boy by David Sheff

Maybe you enjoyed a successful Dry January, so you’re questioning alcohol’s role in your life. 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. 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. The acclaimed author of Prozac Nation goes from depression to addiction with this equally devastating personal account. Wurtzel reveals how drugs fueled her post-breakout period, describing with unbearable specificity how her doctor’s prescription of Ritalin, intended to help her function, only brought her down.

For any child or adult who has experienced trauma, abuse, neglect, and substance use during childhood, ACOA can be a tremendous resource. This book is very relatable to intervention professionals who have difficulty helping parents focus on themselves and not their child’s substance use problem. As with almost every family we encounter during the intervention process, they are confused and at odds. Many parents are headed for divorce and sleeping in separate beds due to letting their children divide them. I believe this book does a great job of helping the parents of children using drugs or alcohol understand that it is not OK not to light themselves on fire to keep their children warm.

Many who have suffered this emotional abuse believe that if their own family did not love them or care, how could anyone else. Later in life, the affected person goes into relationships with escape hatches. In other words, they never let another person get close to them for fear of rejection later. They always seem to have to control the relationship by holding off saying I love you or fully trusting the other person. Children of substance users and many substance users often act this way towards relationships with others. This is why we can’t stress enough that if a family doesn’t want to intervene on the substance user at least intervene as an attempt to help the substance user’s children. Probably the least-known work of the Brontë sisters, by the least-known sister, Anne’s second and last novel was published to great success in 1848.

In addition to ACOA and Alateen, here are some book suggestions for young people and adults who can benefit from reading. Even though the essays weren’t publishable, they still had utility. When my mom snuck away to chug wine from the open bar at my graduate school reception, a classmate found me so I could intervene. She knew it was my mother because of what I’d written, she said, best alcoholic memoirs and because we have the same face. I write about this here because I have to show you what I mean when I say, “My mother is an alcoholic.” I need you to take me seriously in a world where you can buy a wine glass that has “Mom Juice” etched on it. Alyssa who is the National Director of Digital Marketing, joined the Banyan team in 2016, bringing her five-plus years of experience.

How to Avoid Drinking Too Much at a Wedding: Tips and Strategies

Science is used to back up the theory that addiction is not just willpower, or a “broken brain” but instead a learning/developmental disorder that lies on a spectrum. This book is powerful because it removes the stigma and takes a 21st-century look at an age-old problem. If you are wondering how you or your loved one got to a place where addiction took hold this book will help to provide you answers. It would be really easy to simply gloss over the pivotal, seeping role of alcoholism in this book, being as it is, a truly gripping murder story. And yet, the psychological terror of the book is informed by the dual psychosis of its main characters, one of whom is a young man, an alcoholic who seems intent on destroying his organs as quickly as possible.

Families often increase the addiction problem and may or may not believe the help they provide will one day pay off. Addiction does not improve by providing the affected person with resources, housing, food, comfort, and other forms of counterproductive support. No substance user enters a rehab center or considers positive change unless they see and feel the need to do so. To this day, almost every addiction professional concedes Sober House to that; not all, and most do. When addicted lives are made easier, the addicted person is less likely to change their life. Similar to Cherry, Ohio is also a devastating depiction of the aftermath of returning from war and getting swept up by the opioid epidemic and is set in Ohio. This novel is about four former high school classmates who return to a small fictional town in southeast Ohio, called New Canaan, one night in 2013.

Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life by Kelsey Miller

This addiction recovery book is also helpful for family and friends looking to support a loved one as they recover. Rausing, the editor of Granta and heiress to a Swedish beverage-packaging fortune, writes beautifully of the idyllic seaside summers of her 1970s childhood and the heavy bonds of family. She does not recover in any straightforward way from worry, obsession, or attempts to control her brother or – obviously – the narrative, but she makes her way towards a kind of serenity. While this listen might appear to be autobiographical, it’s actually a work of fiction that’s meant to be experienced as if it were a memoir.

• Decades later, Cat reminisces about those days with Marlena and learns to forgive herself and move on from those days.
• This addiction recovery book is also helpful for family and friends looking to support a loved one as they recover.
• Helen ultimately escapes her marriage and pretends to be a widow, earning a living as an artist to care for herself and her young son.
• Knowledge may be power, but taking action is what brings change.