The Best Addiction Memoirs Five Books Expert Recommendations

Before I was old enough to simply walk out of the house and literally escape, I hid inside my room and read entire afternoons away, happily lost. This is an approachable recipe book using everyday healthy ingredients to make delicious alcohol-free drinks for every occasion. Developed by registered dietitians, this book takes a new twist on classic cocktails.

Researcher Ben Alderson-Day talks us through this odd phenomenon as he selects five of the best book on hallucination. Matt Rowland Hill was born in 1984 in Pontypridd, South Wales, and grew up in Wales and England. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, New Statesman, the Telegraph and other outlets. Next you’ve chosen to recommend Tove Ditlevsen’s Dependency, the third book in her Copenhagen Trilogy.

“Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol”

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. Ultimately, Walls and her sisters and brother do escape, finding a fresh start in New York City, where Walls, for one, becomes a writer for New York Magazine. Every now and then, though, she spots her parents, also now in New York, living on the streets. Don’t come at me for not including your favorite memoir; this is a list of the most influential, not the best, and honestly, I had to cut so many of my own favorites from this list.

This book is a great place to start if you’ve been feeling sober curious. 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. In his first novel, Burroughs gives a vivid, semi-autobiographical account of heroin addiction in the early 1950s. The acclaimed author of Prozac Nation goes from depression to addiction with this equally devastating personal account.

This Naked Mind by Annie Grace

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. Serious addiction has a way of annihilating your sense of exceptionalism, stripping away your autonomy and character, and reducing you to the sum best alcoholic memoirs of your cravings. Meanwhile solidarity and communion are often touchstones among recovering addicts. I think a trace of that worldview finds expression—again, in the best addiction memoirs—in the form’s tendency to value the authentically commonplace over sensational performance.

• This book provides an amazing framework for embracing our true selves in a society that tries to tell us we’re not already whole as we are.
• In her early 20s, writer Jamison (The Empathy Exams) started drinking daily to ease her chronic shyness and deal with the stress of getting her master’s degree at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
• 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.
• Probably the least-known work of the Brontë sisters, by the least-known sister, Anne’s second and last novel was published to great success in 1848.