Early recovery has the quality of vigorous exercise, as though each repetition of a painful moment… serves to build up emotional muscle. Ahead, see the 15 stories of struggle, failure, recovery, and grace that have moved us the most.

Sainsbury’s Alcohol Free Sparkling Wine 0%

During the most unsettling time of my life, I craved all the messy, tragic, complex, wonderful stories that could show me what was on the other side. Nobody in my real life could meet that need, so I turned—as I always do when I need comfort, encouragement, or inspiration—to books. In The House of Hidden Meaning, celebrated drag queen, RuPaul, reckons with a murky inner world that has shaped—and hindered—a lifetime of gender-bending theatricality. The figurative house at the center of the story is his “ego,” a plaguing barrier that apparently long inhibited the performer from realizing dreams of greatness. Readers expecting dishy stories may be disappointed, but the psychological self-assessment in the pages of this memoir is far more edifying than Hollywood gossip could ever be. But at other times, reading a memoir or biography can be an expansive exercise, opening us up to broader truths about our world.

‚Love, Pamela: A Memoir of Prose, Poetry, and Truth‘

Alec Baldwin is reflecting on his sobriety journey and being 39 years drug-free. A book’s total score is based on multiple factors, including the number of people who have voted for it and how highly those voters ranked the book. While not a replacement for professional therapy and treatment, The Addiction Recovery Workbook can help equip you with coping best alcoholic memoirs techniques and actionable strategies to succeed in recovery, despite triggers, stressors, and daily challenges. Self-help books are yet another device that can support your efforts. Granted, books certainly can’t replace treatment and professional guidance. But they can provide fresh perspectives and inspiration—and reinforce that you’re not alone.

Five of the Best Literary Historical Novels

• Unvarnished accounts of the havoc and disaster of addiction, whether played for farce or pathos, are as reliably found in the most artistically ambitious addiction memoirs as in the least.
• To welcome her to the team, Caitlin is invited to take part in Aurora’s annual corporate retreat in Miami.
• Readers expecting dishy stories may be disappointed, but the psychological self-assessment in the pages of this memoir is far more edifying than Hollywood gossip could ever be.
• “What you are about to read is not a standard account of the life and work of Joni Mitchell,” she writes in the introduction.

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. But, growing up with an alcoholic mother, my most common mode of escape as a child was in fiction. Before I was old enough to simply walk out of the house and literally escape, I hid inside my room and read entire afternoons away, happily lost.

Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction

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 1996 bestseller, Caroline Knapp paints a vivid picture of substance use and recovery that every reader can appreciate, whether you struggle with substance use or not. Knapp writes elegantly about her 20+ years of ‘high-functioning drinking’. Winning career accolades by day and drinking at night, Knapp brings you to the netherworld of alcohol use disorder. This powerful memoir follows Cain’s life as she navigates a substance use disorder, incarceration, and sex work over the course of 19 years.

Recovery by Russell Brand

Since I don’t love the word “journey”, I prefer to think of it as a kind of endurance art, the term performance artists give to work that requires long periods of hardship, solitude or pain. 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. In Quit Like a Woman, author Holly Whitaker examines the drinking culture, specifically surrounding alcohol and women, and gives women a step-by-step guide to quitting—or at least, changing their relationship with alcohol. However, beyond the book that focuses on some key ideas, including changing our beliefs and practicing abstinence, among others, Whitaker aims to change the narrative surrounding alcohol consumption.

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

Journalist Jenny Valentish knows treatment, AA, and the pathways to addiction and recovery. It’s brutally honest, and her story reads like so many others – some who didn’t make it to recovery. She further educates the reader with research and a better understanding of the psychology and physiology that drive female addiction with humor and exceptional insight.

‚The Woman in Me‘

Already well-known for her experimental writings, Sheila Heti takes a decade of diary entries and maps sentences against the alphabet, from A to Z. The project is a subversive rethink of our relationship to introspection—which often asks for order and clarity, like in diary writing—that maps new patterns and themes in its disjointed form. Heti plays with both her confessionals and her sometimes formulaic writing style (like knowingly using “Of course” in entries) to retrace the changes made (and unmade) across ten years of her life. Alphabetical Diaries is a sometimes demanding book given the incoherence of its entries, but remains an illuminating project in thinking about efforts at self-documentation. Biographies and memoirs charting remarkable lives—whether because of fame, fortune or simply fascination—have the power to inspire us for their depth, curiosity or challenges. When we hear the word “recovery”, especially alongside “literature”, we tend to think of books on alcoholism or drug addiction.

• A 1996 bestseller, Caroline Knapp paints a vivid picture of substance use and recovery that every reader can appreciate, whether you struggle with substance use or not.
• For more resources in sobriety, online alcohol treatment programs like Ria Health can help as well.
• Functioning and fun-loving, this author’s love for wine hardly seems like a problem until her attempt to cut back proves much more challenging than she had imagined.
• 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.
• The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober explores the role alcohol plays in our world and insights from top neuroscientists and psychologists about why we drink.
• But when she returned to it — the day after she told her husband she needed to stop drinking — she read it cover to cover.

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Whitaker’s book offers a road map of non-traditional options for recovery. It is well-researched, educational, informative, and at times mind-blowing. She writes with deep emotion even when sharing factual research. This is a must read for anyone passionate about exploring their relationship with alcohol and the role a patriarchal system has played in rising rates of unhealthy substance use in America. 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.