For readers who’ve followed her over three searingly honest books, where survival let alone redemption often seemed unlikely, her final discovery of a bruised and hard-won peace feels like an instance of what can only be called grace. Although she makes faltering progress in building a simulacrum of grown-up life, her relationship with alcohol—“I had an appetite for drink, a taste for it, a talent”—steadily overtakes everything. 2009’s Lit is the volume that deals with Karr’s alcoholism and desperate search for recovery. 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.

How to Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell

There’s a long, beautiful history of writers chronicling how they’ve dealt with alcoholism and addiction. The following are a smattering of the books about alcoholism I’ve found meaningful. I recently came to terms with my own problematic relationship with alcohol, and my one solace has been in books. When she realizes sobriety is her only path forward, she keeps a diary of her road to recovery, from finding a sponsor to discovering a new social life not centered around alcohol. Here, Naus recounts jail time, an attempted murder charge and an uphill battle to reclaim a life nearly lost to the stranglehold of addiction in this outrageous memoir.

Drinking by Caroline Knapp

The Dry Challenge can be especially helpful for people who drink socially, and are looking to take a structured step back to re-evaluate their habits. It gives you new eyes to see the beauty in living sober. Van der Kolk describes our inner resilience to manage the worst of life’s circumstances with our innate survival instinct.

In it, Annie talks about her own experiences with addiction while keeping things deeply relatable to anyone who’s questioned alcohol’s role in their life. This Naked Mind by Annie Grace is one of the most loved sobriety books ever written. Every year, the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award—the world’s longest-running sports writing prize—highlights the very best new books in the genre. Although both are worth reading, it’s the first I find myself returning to, marvelling at its ability to conjure the insanity of addiction from inside its diabolical reality.

This ethical dimension (or an aesthetic impurity) is a distinctive aspect of addiction memoir as a literary form. 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. 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.

The acclaimed author of Prozac Nation goes from depression to addiction with this equally devastating personal account. 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). 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.

Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp

But she recognizes her relationship with alcohol is different than that of the casual-drinking moms in her friend group. Michael Pond has treated people with addiction for years as a psychotherapist but finds himself homeless, broke and alone when he succumbs to his own battle with alcohol use disorder. Tragic, inspiring, humorous and heart-wrenching—these true accounts of the struggle for sobriety will move you and maybe inspire you to see what the sober life is all about. Peak Covid saw people giving into excess where alcohol was concerned, and the rise of sobriety following the pandemic seems straight out of a ‘nature is healing’ meme. Choosing the best Alcoholics books of all time can vary depending on who you ask, but seven titles that are often celebrated include While these books on the topic of Alcoholics are highly regarded, it’s important to note that any list of ‘best’ books is subjective and reflects a range of opinions.

We Are the Luckiest by Laura McKowen

She shares her personal lifelong struggle with anxiety, which led to excessive substance use, rehab, and her ultimate triumph into recovery. Written with raw vulnerability, the pages of this book are filled with an honest look at her own relationship to alcohol. This darkly funny and touching memoir isn’t just about alcohol; it’s about anxiety, trauma, and trying to be okay. She doesn’t sugarcoat the pain of addiction, but she does illuminate the deep richness of life in sobriety. This bold and empowering memoir is part manifesto, part raw personal story.

Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction

Surprisingly revealing for a life played on reality television and magazines, Open Book is a testament to W. It’s an inspiring and, at times, unbelievable tale told with unflinching honesty and a heavy dose of self-deprecation. The result is a new, science-based approach to treating and managing addiction. Raw and real, Pond’s bok shows how he uncovers a new path to recovery outside the traditional abstinence-based programs with the help of his partner, Maureen Palmer. Johnston delves into the societal, psychological, and physiological factors that contribute to the rising rates of alcohol abuse among women.

Louise Foxcroft on The History of Medicine and Addiction

This book reads like a conversation, and teaches us to get curious. Perhaps any of Dr. Brown’s books could be listed here. This is an approachable recipe book using everyday healthy ingredients to make delicious alcohol-free drinks for every occasion. This book offers a collection of elegant, complex, and sophisticated recipes that prove there’s so much more to zero proof beverages than overly sweet ‘mocktails’. (And for good reason!) Atomic Habits offers practical strategies for making meaningful changes to your habits and routines, one tiny step at a time. This book will inspire anyone looking for fun and adventure to create incredible memories while living alcohol-free.

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at email protected And I can’t think of a better compliment to a writer of addiction memoir – or, indeed, any writer – than that. Having said that, I did—while reading Ditlevsen’s Dependency—occasionally need to put the book down and take a few deep breaths. 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. And, in fact, drugs are absent from most of the book’s action, which is about my sometimes difficult childhood as the son of an evangelical preacher, growing up (or failing to), the catastrophe of losing my faith in my teens—and then my desperate search for salvation elsewhere.

Sometimes, a slow realization of enough being enough is all it takes to gary jackson, author at sober-home start your recovery. One valuable point from this book is that not everyone needs to reach a “rock bottom” before quitting alcohol. The book covers her whole first-year experience of sobriety, as well as the unexpected challenges she faced along the way. The Sober Diaries follows the narrative of author Clare Pool’s journey in quitting drinking. Sarah also explores how alcohol affected her relationships with her friends, family, and even her cat.

Weaving together poems, historical documents, and photos, this is an essential book about, among many other things, alcoholism and survival. Quit Like a Woman is her informative and relatable guidebook to breaking an addiction to alcohol. We Are the Luckiest is a life-changing memoir about recovery—without any sugarcoating. She writes intimately about how she lived in denial and kept her addiction a secret for so long, and what her time in rehab and first year sober was like. Between Breaths is a raw look at her life with anxiety and alcoholism, two monsters perfectly intertwined in her life from a young age.

  • Having said that, I did—while reading Ditlevsen’s Dependency—occasionally need to put the book down and take a few deep breaths.
  • This powerful book narrates his ups and downs, setbacks, and unimaginable challenges in recovery.
  • Stefanie Wilder-Taylor has always had a complicated relationship with alcohol.
  • 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.
  • The book is a poignant and moving portrayal of the author’s resilience and determination to overcome her demons, while finding solace in the untamed beauty of the natural world.
  • 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.

The Running With Scissors author recounts what his rock bottom looked like and tells his story of healing. Jerry Stahl was a writer with significant and successful screenwriting credits — Dr. Caligari, Twin Peaks, Moonlighting, and more. In his first novel, Burroughs gives a vivid, semi-autobiographical account of heroin addiction in the early 1950s. Koren Zalickas began drinking at a young age — 14 years old.

  • It includes recipes for zero-proof cocktails for all seasons and has tips for navigating the dating scene while completely sober.
  • Whether you’re looking for personal stories of struggle and triumph or seeking guidance on how to support a loved one battling alcoholism, these 20 best books about Alcoholics offer a wealth of insight and inspiration.
  • Check out our picks for the best addiction and recovery memoirs.

Your first recommendation is Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, which is considered one of the first books of this kind. People whose lives are in crisis are rarely the most sophisticated readers, and I had an infantile (and perfectly natural) desire to read stories about people like me that were seemingly set in the real world but were, essentially, fables—offering easy lessons and unequivocal hope. So writers of memoir, rather than shaping literature to feel like life, can unconsciously end up shaping their lives on the page to look like literature. The conventions of the addiction memoir, like those of any form, risk becoming a straitjacket.

Written with courage and candor this book leaves you ready to push against a society suggesting alcohol is the solution to women’s problems. Whitaker’s book offers a road map of non-traditional options for recovery. This book serves as a beacon to anyone who’s looking to change their relationship with alcohol. She highlights not only her relationship to alcohol, but also key takeaways from her many attempts to get sober. This book tells an incredible story of not only recovery, but also how it connects to race and sexual identity.

I know it’s true from introspection, and from spending time around other addicts, whether using or in recovery. And there’s another reason why, in a sense, Knapp’s book can be seen as a “better” addiction memoir than other, more artistically original, ones. If you wanted to play the slightly arbitrary game of identifying the moment the addiction memoir came into being as a form, I think you could plausibly claim that it was with this book.