This book is a great place to start if you’ve been feeling sober curious. Punch Me Up to the Gods is a beautifully written series of personal essays that describe Brian Broome’s experience growing up Black and queer in Ohio, and the effect early substance use had on his upbringing. In his first novel, Burroughs gives a vivid, semi-autobiographical account of heroin addiction in the early 1950s. The acclaimed author of Prozac Nation goes from depression to addiction with this equally devastating personal account.

There’s a long, beautiful history of writers chronicling how they’ve dealt with alcoholism and addiction. Poet Lucy Grealy, a survivor of Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare but serious form of jaw cancer, narrates the story of her diagnosis and the resulting disfigurement of her face from a series of surgeries. She was in fourth grade at the time, with many years of school, crushes, and social events ahead of her. It wasn’t until she indulged her passion for poetry in college that she came closer to self-love and was able to embrace the challenges of opening up to the possibility of love with others. Reading We are the Luckiest by Laura McKowen can quite possibly save your life. For anyone hiding in the shadows of shame, this book is a guiding light.

The 20 Most Influential Memoirs of All Time

One valuable point from this book is that not everyone needs to reach a “rock bottom” before quitting alcohol. Sometimes, a slow realization of enough being enough is all it takes to start your recovery. Dove “Birdie” Randolph is doing her best to be a perfect daughter. She’s focusing on her schoolwork and is on track to finish high school at the top of her class. But then she falls for Booker, and her aunt Charlene—who has been in and out of treatment for alcoholism for decades—moves into the apartment above her family’s hair salon.

Told in the present tense (another rarity in autobiography), the result is a stunningly immersive and intimate story. We seem to experience Ditlevsen’s life with her, moment by vivid moment. Meanwhile successful writing always surprises and challenges us, perhaps by defying the conventions of the form to which it belongs or simply by refreshing them in some way. I’ve chosen these books partly because they’re all excellent, but partly too because through them we can see the conventions of the form being established and refined—and, sometimes, refreshed, defied or undermined. They all succeed in doing what superb writing does—they jolt us into a sense of intimate contact with whatever they’re describing, making the world new for us. 10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.

alcoholism,

Work events, brunch, baby showers, book club, hair salons—the list of where to find booze is endless. Holly Whitaker, in her own path to recovery, discovered the insidious ways the alcohol industry targets women and the patriarchal methods of recovery. 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. Quit Like a Woman is her informative and relatable guidebook to breaking an addiction to alcohol. When I stopped drinking alcohol, I was desperate to know the stories of other people who’d also taken this road less traveled. 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.

• The Dry Challenge can be especially helpful for people who drink socially, and are looking to take a structured step back to re-evaluate their habits.
• It also launched Bourdain’s public career, with several more food memoirs and food travel shows on CNN and the Food Network.
• They affect the mentally ill and the chemically altered, but also those suffering from migraine, Parkinson’s, and even grief.

Most are forgettable and forgotten, but some accomplished authors—like Caroline Knapp and Sarah Hepola—have created very good books by bringing real skill to the standard formula. 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. The eponymous hero of novel John Barleycorn (1913) is really its author, Jack London. Don Birnam in The Lost Weekend (1944) is really its creator, Charles R. Jackson. 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.

The best memoirs of drug and alcohol addiction

She is traumatized but also resilient, finding ways, despite her youth, to collect a paycheck and continue her culinary education. Hamilton earned an best alcoholic memoirs MFA in fiction writing, which may in part explain the luminous beauty of her prose. Listen to this coaching video and stop thinking about drinking.

• Punch Me Up to the Gods is a beautifully written series of personal essays that describe Brian Broome’s experience growing up Black and queer in Ohio, and the effect early substance use had on his upbringing.
• We seem to experience Ditlevsen’s life with her, moment by vivid moment.
• The result is a definitive treatment of the American recovery movement—a memoir in the subgenre like no other.
• I almost wanted to snap it shut, but instead finished it in one day and have read it at least three more times since.
• Sarah also explores how alcohol affected her relationships with her friends, family, and even her cat.
• 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.
• If you missed it during its first wave of attention, what are you waiting for?

Reading her book is like sharing a cup of coffee with your wise best friend. She’s brilliant in writing and shares many actionable tips and strategies. 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 like no other.

Addiction Memoirs Are a Genre in Recovery

While the Islamic Revolution raged outside, these women came together, removed their veils, and found themselves in the words of writers like Vladimir Nabokov, Jane Austen, and F. Reading Lolita in Tehran is the moving story of these women and their stand of resistance. Tara Westover’s memoir shook the world when it came out in 2018, and has since spent more than 125 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List. In a time when many people had lost faith in democracy, Educated sheds light on what can happen in isolated communities without government. Westover grew up in a survivalist home and was homeschooled until 17. She decided to study hard for college entrance exams, and once there, her entire world opened up.