8 Books About Sobriety to Help You Drink Less, or Quit Altogether The New York Times

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.

She then endured a sense of disfigurement and isolation from other children. She became an accomplished poet and essayist before dying at 39 in 2002. Grealy’s life is the subject of another powerful memoir, Ann Patchett’s “Truth best alcoholic memoirs & Beauty,” which recounts the friendship between the two writers. The American-born daughter of Chinese immigrants, Kingston navigates a bewildering journey between worlds, each one stifling yet perforated by inconsistencies.

“Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?” is an enduring memoir on the lifelong search for belonging

But many readers —like the one I was during my time in rehab in 2015—also come to it seeking something often considered antithetical to art. I mean help, whether in the form of identification, solace or instruction. I said this convention concerned reading more directly than writing, but—since all good writing involves deep sensitivity to the reader’s experience—the two things are ultimately inseparable.

Nedra Glover Tawwab combines wisdom, research, and practical tools to help you change your life by building sustainable boundaries that actually work for you. Detailing a love of medicine, motorcycles, and men, this revealing chronicle of a stunning life comes from a physician first famed for writings on the mysteries of the brain. In this memoir of poverty and race in the rural South, Jesmyn Ward captures the despair of unending pain while honoring the life of https://ecosoberhouse.com/ each young Black man she knew and lost to systemic injustice. Hisham Matar’s staggering Pulitzer-winning memoir reflects on a journey home to Libya to attempt to piece together what happened to his long-vanished father, a prominent critic of the Gaddafi regime. Geochemist and geobiologist Hope Jahren unearths stories from her career with this luminous debut probing her journeys in and out of the lab, the value of collaboration, and the wondrous lives of plants.

The 15 most powerful memoirs about addiction and recovery

It would be really easy to simply gloss over the pivotal, seeping role of alcoholism in this book, being as it is, a truly gripping murder story. And yet, the psychological terror of the book is informed by the dual psychosis of its main characters, one of whom is a young man, an alcoholic who seems intent on destroying his organs as quickly as possible. Bruno’s complete lack of contact with reality makes his alcoholism seemingly beside the point, but as the story progresses, I find my sympathies shifting as Bruno becomes more and more helplessly imprisoned by his disease. Highsmith manages to humanely portray a murdering, rich, hapless drunk so that near the end, one inevitably feels more complicated and ravaged by both Highsmith and Bruno’s trickery. Often, when we think of books about addiction and specifically alcoholism (in my case), we think of important, tell-all works of nonfiction.

Her increasingly dysfunctional relationship with alcohol had to stop, but after decades of social drinking, she was terrified of what that might mean. She takes us through her journey of recovery in this moving, inspiring story about giving up something you think you love to live the life you truly want. Having said that, I did—while reading Ditlevsen’s Dependency—occasionally need to put the book down and take a few deep breaths. Even the second time around I found it so viscerally powerful that at times I was overwhelmed. It was every bit as gruelling and heartbreaking as the truth required it to be.