7 Novels That Capture the Pain and Chaos of Alcoholism Literary Hub

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best alcoholic memoirs

Dry Humping is filled with alcohol-free date ideas, scripts for awkward conversations, tips from experts, prompts, people’s perspectives, and more. While not a replacement for professional therapy and treatment, The Addiction Recovery Workbook can help equip you with coping techniques and actionable strategies to succeed in recovery, despite triggers, stressors, and daily challenges. 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. Dependency is startlingly unlike any other memoir about addiction—that I know of, at least.

High Achiever: The Incredible True Story of One Addict’s Double Life

best alcoholic memoirs

Sometimes, a slow realization of enough being enough is all it takes to start your recovery. Blackout by Sarah Hepola is a brutally honest quit lit memoir of living through blackout after blackout—something that many who’ve struggled with heavy alcohol use can relate to. Whereas my progress was from religion to addiction, Mary Karr’s was the other way around. But though our world-views are in some ways profoundly different, few books have enriched me as a reader and a person more than hers. — 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 is fully present with her daughter.

Stash: My Life in Hiding

  • This is more than a cookbook – it’s a captivating read and a gorgeous coffee table book to peruse over and over again.
  • His first full-length memoir follows him from a seemingly endless rock bottom to a passion for running that leads him out of a life of self-destruction and chaos.
  • There’s no award for “Most Sobriety Memoirs Read,” so read them for yourself — let their wisdom be its own award (I can feel your eye rolls. I’m sorry.).
  • The marketing strategies employed to sell booze to women are as alarming as the skyrocketing number of women who qualify as having alcohol use disorders.

But even more than how it captures the bleakness of alcoholism, what I most value in this book is how she https://ecosoberhouse.com/ narrates her recovery with such brutal honesty. She keeps showing up to 12-step meetings, even when they do nothing for her. Her breakthrough arrives as much through exhaustion as some kind of epiphany. She discovers in Catholicism a spirituality that makes sense to her and seems to keep her sober, but she doesn’t proselytise or become too holy for irony. Instead she presents herself as a kind of Godly schmuck, chronically slow on the spiritual uptake.

The Sober Diaries by Clare Pool

But Ditlevsen’s single conventional moment also, I think, underlines her originality. The result was a tale whose bracing darkness is ultimately redeemed not by its perfunctorily hopeful ending but by the extraordinary force and beauty of its telling. Ditlevsen’s failure of nerve, causing her to wrap up three volumes of the most trenchant and unillusioned autobiography ever written with a feeble daydream, is best alcoholic memoirs easily explained. She surely felt the reader (and perhaps the author) had endured too much pain in the preceding story to be sent away without solace.

best alcoholic memoirs

It’s a witty, straightforward tale of the shenanigans, shame, and confusion that occurs in the morning-afters. Sarah also explores how alcohol affected her relationships with her friends, family, and even her cat. The ones who can make it to the other side of addiction gain an enriched, rare perspective on life that they never could’ve had otherwise. Any information published on this website or by this brand is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional. For the past decade, Literary Hub has brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. 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.

The Best Addiction Memoirs for the Sober Curious

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. For one kind of author, helping the reader is the whole point of writing an addiction memoir; for another, even to consider doing so would be aesthetically fatal. My guess is that most addiction memoirs involve some kind of compromise between the author’s aesthetic and ethical impulses.

best alcoholic memoirs

best alcoholic memoirs

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. 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.