14 Outstanding Books About Addiction and Recovery

09 Feb 14 Outstanding Books About Addiction and Recovery

Regardless of the book you choose, it is always recommended that family members of addicts and alcoholics check out support groups such as Al-Anon, Families Anonymous, and ACOA meetings, along with individual therapy. The Recovering spends chapters grappling with the value of these stories, in the repetition itself, and the community they build in sobriety. Jamison writes about the utility of stories in recovery, “Your story is only useful because others have lived it and will live it again.” I have a reflexive resistance to stories as service. A story with a message seems didactic or self-righteous, moralizing like the author knows best. But that resistance ignores the history of human communication, that we told stories because we learned a way best alcoholic memoirs to survive and we didn’t know that it was the right or wrong way but it was a way. A memoir of unblinking honesty and poignant, laugh-out-loud humor,Blackoutis the story of a woman stumbling into a new kind of adventure — the sober life she never wanted. They call into question the beliefs we’ve been raised with, and stereotypes of addiction. Each of these authors demands that we face addiction as an intimate, human story as well as a broad public health and safety issue. For those asking why we’re seeing so much more compassion for the opioid epidemic than we did during the crack epidemic, Dr. Hart is your man. A neuroscientist who made it out of a bad Miami neighborhood ponders in this memoir why he didn’t end up headed down a different path.

Author William Porter uses the science of the brain and psychology to help you understand the effects of alcohol on your body and mind. He also offers step-by-step instructions for starting recovery and sticking with it. He comes from the book publishing world and, again, was someone who was successful and smart, but in active addiction. He lost trust of people around him and in his field, but through sobriety he has been able to regain that trust and help many people along the way.

Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life by Kelsey Miller

By addressing causes rather than symptoms, it is framed as a permanent solution rather than lifetime struggle. It removes the psychological dependence; allowing you to easily drink less . Sarah’s writing is sharp and relatable; a more recent, modern voice in the recovery space. So many of us look at “blacking out” as benign, or normal—an indicator of a “successful” night of drinking. In Blackout, Sarah clearly explains why there’s nothing benign about it and describes what is actually happening to the brain when we reach that point of alcohol-induced amnesia. I love her perspective on drinking as an act of counter-feminism—that in reality it actually dismantles our power, our pride, and our dignity as women, though we intended the opposite.

We would like to see unification and understanding of how working together produces effective solutions for families and parents. When you read any Masters or Ph.D. level textbooks on counseling theories and strategies, you find strategies utilized in Alcoholics Anonymous. Looking back to the psychoanalytic theory developed by Sigmund Freud and collective unconscious developed by Carl Jung, there are similarities to the suggestions of Alcoholics Anonymous. As you read through all the other counseling strategies that came after, you will find equal similarities. The point is, the foundational message, vision, and solution of Alcoholics Anonymous cannot be completely avoided regardless of which method works for someone to achieve sobriety. Sober Home Trying to strategize and find solutions with other family members affected by the addiction is not always the best course of action either and often results in ineffective outcomes. The Book of Alcoholics Anonymous can be read and used as a guide to sobriety regardless of one’s substance of choice. The book sheds light on the behaviors, reasons, shortcomings, and character defects. It provides tremendous insight into the substance user’s struggle with resentment, selfishness, dishonesty, self will, and perception. Regardless of how one finds their way out of addiction, the chances are excellent that some of the successfully applied strategies run parallel in idea, thought, action, and structure to suggestions of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Leave the Light On

It’s a testament to how one moment, completely out of our control, can drastically change our lives. Often, we hear the stories of people with addiction being redeemed by their children — but this is not that kind of story, which is precisely why we love it. It’s about a woman who longs to belong and find comfort in her new life with husband and baby but instead develops a gripping addiction to wine. When I stopped drinking alcohol, I was desperate to know the stories of other people who’d also taken this road less traveled. During the most unsettling time of my life, I craved all the messy, tragic, complex, wonderful stories that could show me what was on the other side. Nobody in my real life could meet that need, so I turned—as I always do when I need comfort, encouragement, or inspiration—to books. In his follow-up to his first memoir, Tweak, which dealt with his journey into meth addiction, Sheff details his struggle to stay clean. In and out of rehab, he falls into relapse, engaging in toxic relationships and other self-destructive behaviors that threaten to undo the hard-won progress he’s made.

In this memoir, Vargas recounts the childhood that led to her anxiety and panic and how alcohol gave her a release from her painful reality. Predictably though, addiction eventually became part of her painful reality. The raw and deeply personal struggles of addiction come to the surface in this bestselling book. In it, Nick Sheff gives a detailed depiction of his daily struggles as an addict. He gives readers a firsthand account of the thoughts and feelings that an addict wrestles with. Many readers that struggle with addiction resonate with Nick and his rocky journey to recovery. The other group is ACOA, which stands for Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families. As we stated above, alcoholics are addicts, and their drug of choice is alcohol. ACOA is a program for children raised in dysfunctional homes primarily due to alcohol and drug use, although they address other concerns relating to abuse, trauma, neglect, etc. ACOA is a 12-step group, and members of ACOA will be around others who can relate and who have gone through similar experiences.

If you search online, you will find many videos and material by Dr. Gabor Mate. Of all his books, In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts is one of his best. Mate describes how he believes much of addiction in your adult years stems from childhood trauma. Implicit memory is memory without recollection of the actual event. Here are some other books we believe will provide you with strong insight into addiction and the obstacles that both families and drug addicts face.

Ria Health offers several FDA-approved medications for alcohol use disorder. When combined with counseling, this approach is proven highly effective. The information on this website is not intended to be a substitute for, or to be relied upon as, medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a physician or qualified health provider with questions regarding a medical condition. Weekly inspiration, new podcasts and music, reading and watching recommendations, and encouragement for your week. Plus up-to-date info on upcoming courses, events, podcast interviews that Laura is hosting or attending.

When a child cannot discuss what is going on at home, it has a profuse effect on their brain development and ability to form healthy relationships and bonds. The resentments that develop for young children can lead them to substance use themselves and unhealthy choices in relationships. The sooner you can get in front of a child affected by substance use, the less damage may be done. Alateen is part of Al-Anon and focuses on young people who need help affected by addiction. Addiction can profoundly affect children, and the quicker they get into Alateen and individual therapy, the greater the opportunity for them to understand what is going on with themselves and the substance user.

• It explains how alcohol affects human beings on a chemical, physiological, and psychological level, from those first drinks right up to chronic alcoholism….
• If you are struggling with addiction, depression, anxiety, or need help with any other mental substance abuse or health-related issues, be sure to reach out to a professional.
• A wise man once said that the only problem with self-help books is starting with self.
• My addiction always took me to new lows, and cost me many jobs over the years.
• Ann’s book is such a unique and insightful combination of personal experience and scientific research.

Learn the difference between inpatient and outpatient treatment centers, read advice from medical specialists, learn how to recognize addiction and more in this informative piece. Gain practical knowledge in this science-based work by clinician and psychiatrist Adam Bisaga. In this work, Bisaga explains why opioid addiction requires a unique treatment approach compared to other drug dependencies. The book also details various methods of treatment for opioid addiction and how to select the right method for yourself or a loved one. Keep reading for our round-up of the best addiction recovery books. As you work through the recovery process, you may find these addiction recovery books valuable.

Unless the book helps the family members identify their role in the unbalanced family system, the book of choice may not be as helpful as one would hope for. Anything positive—book deals and teaching jobs and solid men and well-loved children—became enmeshed in shame. Jamison’s partner writes her a poem as a confirmation that he will always love her, no matter what, but she trips on a line that mentions her drinking and sees the poem as an indictment. Shame could be teased out of gestures of love, no matter what was offered. Author Maia Szalavitz shows us, through her own history, how the current disease model of addiction is not accurate.

Children are greatly affected, and Dr. Black understands the impact of them holding their true feelings inside and not talking about their feelings. If you know a child that could benefit from this book, we highly recommend that you have them go through it. One of the many challenges we face as professionals are the family’s inability to let go and the overwhelming need to control the situation. Many families do not see where or how they are controlling the situation. This control comes from maladaptive coping strategies intended to comfort best alcoholic memoirs themselves and not the substance user. The substance user benefits from the selfish acts of the family’s enabling and codependency. The family’s true intentions of enabling are for themselves and not the substance user. It is very simple to see what enabling, and codependency is doing for a substance user. It is far more difficult to see why the enabler is comforting the addict and what benefit it is providing the enabler. I’ve wanted her to get sober for a long time, but the reasons have been a slow slide down the hierarchy of needs.