Dry is a heartbreaking memoir of Augusten Burrough’s story of addiction, beginning with an intervention organized by his coworkers and boss and his first bout of sobriety. Hepola spends hungover mornings piecing together the missing hours of the nights before and frequently wakes up with unrecognizable men in unfamiliar places. She eventually realizes a life of forgotten times and missing memories is no life at all, and she sets out to find her identity outside of drinking. 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. With the same wit and candor found in his other popular works, we follow the writer from a rehab reality check back to the bustling city, where he must learn to navigate life on the wagon.
“God and Starbucks: An NBA Superstar’s Journey Through Addiction and Recovery”
2009’s Lit is the volume that deals with Karr’s alcoholism and desperate search for recovery. It can be read alone, but why would you want to miss out on reading all three in order? Although the first two volumes aren’t overtly about Karr’s addiction, they show its makings in her traumatic home life and a lost adolescence. Ditlevsen’s trilogy, by contrast, plunges us into the perspective of a succession of her former selves.
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
So here’s a list of my all-time favorite reads about substance use disorders. Karr arrived with a unique literary voice that combined rich Texan and burst of lyricism. And she had an almost miraculous ability to portray her broken family with wit and love, without ever flinching from pain.
quit lit books for sober curious and mindful drinkers
— early into her sobriety, she realized that she was actually the lucky one. Thanks to an alcohol- and drug-free life, McKowen now feels all of her feelings, no longer has to balance multiple lies, and best alcoholic memoirs is fully present with her daughter. It’s understandable to feel alone and like no one can relate to your addiction. Luckily, there’s a whole genre of books that prove you are not the only one who has battled addiction. The information provided on this page is intended to be informative and does not substitute or stand for medical advice. If you are concerned about any of the issues raised on this page then please seek medical advice from a doctor or treatment specialist.
- 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.
- 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.
- Knapp writes elegantly about her 20+ years of ‘high-functioning drinking’.
- He was regarded as a radical activist for Black emancipation at the time.
- This makes them more vulnerable to the long-term health effects of heavy drinking.
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. By the end of her drinking she is reduced to crouching on a stairwell outside her apartment, glugging whisky with her one-year-old son and failing marriage inside. 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. This is no joyful, linear skip towards sobriety and redemption. She keeps showing up to 12-step meetings, even when they do nothing for her.
Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction by Elizabeth Vargas
Her story is a beautiful reminder of how safety and support can lead the way to incredible healing. 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. Second, they contain sections describing the lurid drama and dreadful effects of addiction in unsparing detail. 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. Meanwhile the reader is tacitly licensed to enjoy all this mayhem and calamity with a degree of voyeuristic relish and, equally, to take a vicarious pleasure in the author’s recklessness and transgression. Often, when we think of books about addiction and specifically alcoholism (in my case), we think of important, tell-all works of nonfiction.
- Especially the evolution of mommy drinking culture and how we got to this place where we’ve tried to normalize drinking to cope with the stresses of being a woman in today’s modern world.
- Don Birnam in The Lost Weekend (1944) is really its creator, Charles R. Jackson.
- Or feeling that their lives are somehow unsuited to the form.
- “The text is relatable, witty, and accessible, with tangible tips and support that you can action in simple ways, written with empathy from the perspective of somebody who has tried these methods out and come out the other side.”
I am, probably, by way of my history, more attuned to picking up on it than others. If you’re looking for more sobriety resources, check out Monument’s therapist-moderated alcohol support groups and anonymous online forum. 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. Written by a cognitive neuroscientist with former substance use struggles, Marc Lewis emphasizes the habitual reward loop in the brain that can cause a substance use disorder to develop. This book also examines the brain’s ability to create new neural pathways and lose the desire to use substances. 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.
Biographies, Memoirs, & Quit Lit
Combining elements of memoir, nature writing, literary journalism, and pop-culture analysis, written with wonder and deep feeling, this is a story of loss that nonetheless pulses with life. There’s plenty of insightful Drug rehabilitation literature on this complex topic to help you parse out your feelings and guide your decisions on alcohol. Below, we’ve compiled a list of 12 books about alcohol and sobriety — including feminist cultural commentary, fact-filled guidebooks, and stirring memoirs — that will challenge the way you think about drinking.
- I’ve spent the last seven years researching and understanding alcoholism, addiction, and how people get sober.
- After leaving home, marrying, and having a child, she reconnects with a charismatic man from her past, and the two begin an obsessive drug-filled affair that perpetuates a cycle of enabling and mutual destruction.
- I love to try new things, venture down new paths and expand my education and horizon.
- 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.
- Brimming with wit and imagination, We Loved It All is an invitation to contemplate our collective choices, losses, and responsibilities—a poignant and beautifully written ode to life in this most urgent moment.
- Belle’s consistent messaging on our faulty thinking led to a major mindset shift for me.
Drunk Mom by Jowita Bydlowska
“I had never heard of Tepache, a Mexican pineapple-based drink that sounds absolutely fabulous.” This collection of essays by famous American and Canadian writers explores addiction from unique points of view, but with the same underlying theme— addiction has heartbreaking consequences. My prompts will help you dig deep and sustain change from the inside out.