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. Chanel Miller was known only as Emily Doe as she battled her rapist, Brock Turner, in court.
Dry by Augusten Burroughs
I am, probably, by way of my history, more attuned to picking up on it than others. One of the first of its kind, Drink opens our eyes to the connection between drinking, trauma and the impossible quest to ‘have it all’ that many women experience. Ann Dowsett Johnston masterfully weaves personal story, interviews, and sociological research together to create a compelling, informative, and even heartbreaking reality about drinking and womanhood. Written with courage and candor this book leaves you ready to push against a society suggesting alcohol is the solution to women’s problems.
Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction by Elizabeth Vargas
Ann’s book is such a unique and insightful combination of personal experience and scientific research. Reading a few chapters of a recovery-related book each day can help weave your sobriety or moderation goals into your everyday life. It can provide ongoing reminders of why you’re making a change, and give you new tools to incorporate as you continue on your journey. Plus, you’ll get to read beautiful writing, and expand your worldview and perspectives. If you’re looking for more sobriety resources, check out Monument’s therapist-moderated alcohol support groups and anonymous online forum. This is a self-help book by a licensed therapist that braids together anonymized client stories, personal narrative, psychological tools, and brain research.
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Pooley walks us through a year of her life spent battling alcohol addiction and a recent breast cancer diagnosis, two battles — spoiler alert! Based on Fisher’s hugely successful one-woman show, Wishful Drinking is the story of growing up in Hollywood royalty, battling addiction, and dealing with manic depression. 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. The former was a 2006 Oprah’s Book Club pick, touted as a riveting memoir about the 23-year-old’s life of crime, drug abuse, and rehabilitation.
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- But, growing up with an alcoholic mother, my most common mode of escape as a child was in fiction.
- If you’re feeling down about “missing out” on life if you cut back on alcohol or got sober, read this book.
- You can learn more about addiction and relate to authors through their stories, reminding yourself that you aren’t alone in your journey.
- 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.
In return for a donation, you’ll get an ad-free reading experience, exclusive editors’ picks, book giveaways, and our coveted Joan Didion Lit Hub tote bag. Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet. Although this book isn’t specifically about alcohol recovery, https://ecosoberhouse.com/ it has become a go-to guide in many recovery circles. (And for good reason!) Atomic Habits offers practical strategies for making meaningful changes to your habits and routines, one tiny step at a time. It includes research and quotable nuggets on how to immediately take steps toward behavior change.
Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol by Holly Whitaker
With Know My Name, she gets to tell her harrowing story and exist in the world freely as herself. While only a few years old, Know My Name is without a doubt one of the most iconic and influential memoirs on this list. It is the first of Orwell’s published works and set the tone for his dystopian literary classics — and high school required reading — Animal Farm and 1984.
This is a must read for anyone passionate about exploring their relationship with alcohol and the role a patriarchal system has played in rising rates of unhealthy substance use in America. 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. Below are fifteen incredible books by drinkers who battled alcohol addiction and lived to tell the tale.
The Best Addiction Memoirs for the Sober Curious
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. For these best alcoholic memoirs reasons, in many addiction memoirs the end is the weakest part. The tension between on the wagon/off the wagon is often good fodder for literature.
- This is a must read for anyone passionate about exploring their relationship with alcohol and the role a patriarchal system has played in rising rates of unhealthy substance use in America.
- She thought the normal people who could drink casually were lucky.
- She made a huge impact on me and is someone I will always be grateful to.
- He comes from the book publishing world and, again, was someone who was successful and smart, but in active addiction.