Addiction Five Books Expert Recommendations

Here, Naus recounts jail time, an attempted murder charge and an uphill battle to reclaim a life nearly lost to the stranglehold of addiction in this outrageous memoir. Louise Foxcroft chooses her best books on the history of medicine and addiction, looking at medical practices of the past, from treatment of madness and non-existent diseases, to drug use and the origins of hypochondria. Her own book, The Making of Addiction, looks at the use and abuse of opium in 19th-century Britain. Johann Hari discusses the war on drugs, arguing that it has completely failed by almost every single metric you care to use. Hari argues that drug addiction is far more environmentally determined than is allowed for and points to Portugal’s successful programs for reintegrating addicts.

• Although both are worth reading, it’s the first I find myself returning to, marvelling at its ability to conjure the insanity of addiction from inside its diabolical reality.
• Why else would I have been mesmerized by When a Man Loves a Woman or 28 Days in my early 20s?
• But she recognizes her relationship with alcohol is different than that of the casual-drinking moms in her friend group.
• But even more than how it captures the bleakness of alcoholism, what I most value in this book is how she narrates her recovery with such brutal honesty.
• 2009’s Lit is the volume that deals with Karr’s alcoholism and desperate search for recovery.

Drinking by Caroline Knapp

But the challenge is particularly acute when the story is about a life that, as the reader well knows, has simply gone on and on beyond the final page. 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.

Best Books About Addiction

• Ahead, see the 15 stories of struggle, failure, recovery, and grace that have moved us the most.
• Although she makes faltering progress in building a simulacrum of grown-up life, her relationship with alcohol—“I had an appetite for drink, a taste for it, a talent”—steadily overtakes everything.
• Dresner’s story is filled with honesty, wit, and a raw portrayal of the realities of substance abuse.
• From her excessive drinking and smoking to disordered eating and falling for the wrong men, Caroline Knapp is seemingly attracted to anything and everything that isn’t good for her.
• We seem to experience Ditlevsen’s life with her, moment by vivid moment.
• 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.

Jerry Stahl was a writer with significant and successful screenwriting credits — Dr. Caligari, Twin Peaks, Moonlighting, and more. But despite that success, Stahl’s heroin habit began to consume him, derailing his career and destroying his health until one final, intense crisis inspired him to get clean. She’ll go from Lacan to Nicholas Cage’s Valley Girl, to Darwin, and a bit of Jamaica Kincaid thrown in there.

Personalized treatment plans and actionable strategies

Madden is an only child navigating this traumatic landscape alone and then later finding a lifeline in her friends, the titular fatherless girls. Although I think they can all be considered addiction memoirs, and share a familial resemblance with other examples of that form, none of them feel remotely imprisoned by its conventions. And yet—even though each of these books goes its own way, never hesitating to flout a trope or trample a norm to serve its story—they don’t go in terror of the conventions either. Where the story they have to tell echoes others, they let us hear that echo. One characteristic I think I discern in the best addiction memoir is a certain humility that doesn’t strive after innovation for its own sake.

“Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol” by Ann Dowsett Johnston

Sarah Hepola, author of Blackout, one of the addiction memoirs that has its own post on this blog, similarly views Knapp’s contribution as seminal. Joseph Naus beats the odds by overcoming a difficult childhood and becoming a successful civil trial lawyer. Still, his insatiable desire for alcohol and sex upends his entire life on best addiction memoirs one fateful night.

• You are not alone, you are not broken, and there is help.
• I was given this book by my mother when I was a teenager.
• Finally, at the behest of his coworkers and boss, he ends up in a rehab that specifically caters to gay and lesbian patients.
• Jenkins shares raw and vulnerable accounts of her journey, which will resonate with anyone seeking hope during their own recovery.
• Her personal story is inspiring, highlighting the importance of faith, community, and the love of family in the recovery process.

Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp

She discovers in Catholicism a spirituality that makes sense to her and seems to keep her sober, but she doesn’t proselytise or become too holy for irony. Instead she presents herself as a kind of Godly schmuck, chronically slow on the spiritual uptake. For readers who’ve followed her over three searingly honest books, where survival let alone redemption often seemed unlikely, her final discovery of a bruised and hard-won peace feels like an instance of what can only be called grace. For now I’ll mention one more convention of addiction memoirs, although it differs slightly from the others because it’s more directly concerned with how they’re read than with how they’re written.

Alcoholic Hepatitis: Spot The Signs, Reclaim Your Health

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. There’s a long, beautiful history of writers chronicling how they’ve dealt with alcoholism and addiction. I think they called her ‘uppity’ for not talking, when clearly that’s the reaction of a traumatised child. But then the book—and, in some ways, also she—keeps going.

“Beautiful boy: A father’s journey through his son’s addiction” by David Sheff

Navigating the path of addiction recovery can be both challenging and rewarding. The right resources can offer guidance, provide new perspectives, and inspire hope. Whether you are struggling with drug addiction, alcohol use disorder, or simply seeking to improve your mental health, books can be a powerful tool on your journey to recovery. Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best books on addiction that can be instrumental in your recovery. These books cover everything from addiction recovery workbooks to deeply moving addiction memoirs that showcase inspiring true success stories.

Excessive drinking has numerous impacts on your body Sober living house and mind, ranging from mild to severe. Learn which signs to look out for, and how to care for your well-being. 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.