Category: Sober Homes

After struggling with addictions to drugs and alcohol, Brand has been sober since 2003. He writes of how the process of staying sober is a daily activity. He shares his recovery plan and explains the importance of the 12-Step program and how it has helped him in his recovery journey. There’s a long, beautiful history of writers chronicling their battles with alcoholism and addiction. Many celebrated authors have walked the long, painful road to recovery, spinning their experiences into powerful reads. Ahead, see the 15 stories of struggle, failure, recovery, and grace that move us the most. 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. This book explores the next fifteen years of her life, including the various lies that she told herself, and others, about her drug use.

This inspirational book gives real-life examples of how to build coping methods skills and set realistic goals for a healthy life. Written by John Dupuy, Integral Recovery works to modernize drug and alcohol treatment using the latest research, techniques, and information. Promoting a holistic recovery, this author provides an informative and researched-based best alcohol recovery books book about why treatment works. In this self-help book, Drop the Rock is a guide to adjusting character defects that keep many from recovering. Written by authors Bill P., Todd W., and Sara S., this 2005 book speaks in detail of applying the 12-steps to our lives of recovery. Another self-help style book is Freedom from Our Addictions by Russell Brand.

The 15 most powerful memoirs about addiction and recovery

It is all told through the eyes of Jackson, his family, and his community. After getting sober, Allen devoted her life to recovery, and her memoir explores the life she lived through to get to where she is today. From drinks at baby showers to work events, brunch and book clubs, graduations, and funerals, alcohol’s ubiquity are a given and the only time that people get uncomfortable is when someone doesn’t drink. But wherever that journey starts, these memoirs prove that struggle can lead to something beautiful in the end. These alcoholics have no wish to be defined by their failed substance induced endeavors. Although alcoholism can never be cured but only treated, sobriety helps recovered alcoholics believe that it will never be an issue again. 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…. Al-Anon’s basic book discusses the mutual-help program of recovery, including personal stories. A beginning approach to the Twelve Concepts of Service is included.

As a “disorder,” it shares a collection of common symptoms, including alcohol cravings and withdrawal for people who are physically dependent on alcohol. The premise of this book is that every living creature has evolved to seek mind-alteration from the natural world around us. To deny the fact that we do so is to deny an essential part of our nature, not simply as human beings, but as evolutionary creatures with fundamental needs. Siegel makes a compelling and ridiculously well-researched case to stop the war on our intrinsic nature and to find safer alternatives to the toxic drugs that kill so many of us. I read this book before I became a personal trainer, and it brought my physique to the next level.

Resources to Help Explore Your Relationship with Alcohol

Her first memoir is an inside look at her famous parents’ marriage and her own tumultuous love affairs (including her on-again, off-again relationship with Paul Simon). Most notably, it’s a brutally honest — and hilarious — reflection on the late writer’s path to sobriety. TheEmpathy Examsauthor’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. Blackouts are a special horror and humiliation, and not all drinkers experience them. Hepola’s tone is often funny and loose but she writes with a journalist’s precision and the book reads almost like a thriller.

My main interest has always been psychiatry, especially concerning addiction. Belief is a practiceI had to actively choose what I had for so long taken for granted because I was born with it. And I had to do so based on absolutely nothing but the promises of others who’d gone before me who promised a better way. I had to actively choose to believe in myself, despite all the evidence that I shouldn’t. I had to believe there was something much bigger than my body, my mind, my very bruised heart, and that this thing wanted me to live, and live brightly. I had to practice believing because there was no other way to get out. Her program focuses on root causes of overindulgence and how to break the cycle.

Alcohol Use Disorder and Mental Illness

You will never be able to forget this powerful story about, well, trying to remember your life and what happened while Carr was addicted to crack and alcohol. Eventually, he goes on to become a regular columnist for The New York Times. But this tale is all about the three years of reporting that it took Carr to figure out his past. That siren song eventually led broadcast journalist Elizabeth Vargas to admit her addiction on national television. Is a New York Times Best Seller that takes a humorous approach to discuss the complexities of forging a new identity after active addiction. Hepola sheds light on blacking out and how doing that allowed her to bury feelings that she wanted to bury.

Here, he retells his journey from substance use disorder to a torturous path to sobriety. Her quest for sobriety includes rehabs and therapy—necessary steps to begin a journey into realizing and accepting an imperfect self within an imperfect life. Chaney Allen’s Sober House book was the first recovery memoir that was published by a Black woman author. Her story tells the story of a minister’s daughter who grew up poor in Alabama, eventually moving to Cincinnati and falling into substance use disorder, all while raising children.

Some of the closest friendships are forged in the crucible of hard partying. This lyrical, dark, biting novel is about one of those friendships, between Tyler and Laura, roommates and codependent hot messes. They wonder throughout whether they’re overdoing it … and order another round anyway. When the cycle of druggy nights and hardcore hangovers starts getting to Laura, their bond must be reevaluated. As a child, Helaina Hovitz was a very close witness to the attack to the World Trade Center on 9/11. These events leave her with a serious case of PTSD that in turn throw her into despair and later lands her into addiction. The paperback will be coming out in January 2021 everywhere books are sold, (but preferably from your local, independent bookshop!).

I had my first drink at 12 and my first shot of heroin at 14. My brother and sister were also alcoholics and ended up taking their own lives. I abused drugs and alcohol for over 30 years, and after many failed attempts to turn my life around, I now have 15 years of continuous sobriety. I’ve also read almost ninety books on the topic of substance abuse and have written several myself about my personal struggles to get clean and sober and stay that way. Millions of Americans currently suffer from drug best alcohol recovery books and alcohol addiction, yet many of those people feel alone or misunderstood. Although they are not a replacement for drug and alcohol treatment, books about addiction and recovery are a great reminder that you are not alone. Reading about the personal experiences of others who have struggled with addiction is a great way to encourage and inspire yourself throughout the recovery process. Recovery from a drug or alcohol addiction is a lifelong process that requires making healthy choices every day.

Her masterpiece provided me with a wealth of new information and a blueprint for further supplementation. Next to running sprints and lifting heavy weights, reading is my favorite way to let go of stress and achieve a renewed sense of possibility. Opening a good book every night before bed was one of my first strategies for finding a replacement activity for drinking alcohol. Author Maia Szalavitz shows us, through her own history, how the current disease model of addiction is not accurate. 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.

• This revelation prompted her to explore drug use in white-collar settings and she soon discovered that addiction amongst high-achieving professionals is common.
• Laura founded The Luckiest Club in 2020 and it’s now home to thousands of members worldwide.
• His refusal to succumb to society’s view of addiction and the camaraderie between him and his fellow recovering addicts become his way out of a desperate past and into a hopeful future.
• Extremely timely as more and more children are being raised by grandparents due to their parent’s addiction.
• For Caroline Knapp, as it is for many, alcohol was the protective friend that allowed her to get through life.

This book exposes the darkest parts of addiction and argues that unless you jump directly into the circus that is addiction, you will never understand it. She thought the normal people who could drink casually were lucky. She wasn’t self-medicating and was able to truly feel her feelings and live honestly. We Are the Luckiest is a life-changing memoir about recovery—without any sugarcoating. At Port St. Lucie Hospital, we specialize in individualized, holistic therapies that address the whole person. Our programs extend beyond mental illness treatment to detox and dual diagnosis, which combines addiction treatment with mental health therapies. Alcoholism, or the inability to control drinking due to a physiological and cognitive/emotional dependence on the substance, affects many adults today. According to a survey done in 2018, 14.4 million adults ages 18 and older had alcohol use disorder .

She spent many years on the streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. George’s daughter Terry was found frozen to death in Madison, Wisconsin in December of 1994. Her blood-alcohol level was higher than three times the legal limit. Brown identifies ten“guideposts”in wholehearted people’s lives. This is not a long book, but it does cover how to be happy with ourselves. I believe this is an excellent read for any recovering addict. It can help change how we all feel about the expectations placed on us. We are all important and are put on this earth for a specific reason. Codependent No More is written for the families of recovering addicts. This book gives family members exercises to help regain their individuality.