best alcoholic memoirs

For now I’ll mention one more convention of addiction memoirs, although it differs slightly from the others because it’s more directly concerned with how they’re read than with how they’re written. The pleasures we expect from the form range from the edifying (empathy, inspiration) to the best alcoholic memoirs unseemly (voyeurism, vicarious transgression) to mention just a few. 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. I mean help, whether in the form of identification, solace or instruction.

by Caroline Knapp

best alcoholic memoirs

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. By the end of her drinking she is reduced to crouching on a stairwell outside her apartment, glugging whisky with her one-year-old son and failing marriage inside. But even more than how it captures the bleakness of alcoholism, what I most value in this book is how she narrates her recovery with such brutal honesty.

best alcoholic memoirs

I Swear I’ll Make It Up to You: A Life on the Low Road

“My life was changed forever by a single photograph,” she writes. “It was of a Black female researcher floating underwater with an adorable nurse shark. I felt like I had discovered a unicorn.” As a result, she and three other Black shark experts founded the nonprofit Minorities in Shark Sciences to generate more opportunities in the field. When she was six, Jasmin Graham’s father gave her a yellow Tweety Bird fishing rod and took her fishing off the pier in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. So began a love of the ocean that led her to a master’s in marine biology and a career as a shark scientist—a dream come true even if being a young Black woman scientist also came with sexism and racial microagressions. To vote on books not in the list or books you couldn’t find in the list, you can click on the tab add books to this list and then choose from your books, or simply search.

best alcoholic memoirs

Jim’s book list on

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. New Yorker TV https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/how-alcohol-can-affect-relationships/ critic and Pulitzer Prize winner Emily Nussbaum gleefully charts the history of reality TV in her new book, Cue the Sun! While some might claim the genre was born in the late 1990s, Nussbaum makes the case that it started much earlier with the 1940s radio-then-TV programs Candid Microphone and Candid Camera. This reality TV throughline, Nussbaum argues, continued into the 1960s with the game show The Newlywed Game and 1970s docu-series An American Family.

best alcoholic memoirs

Open Book by Jessica Simpson

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. 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. The result is a new, science-based approach to treating and managing addiction. Stefanie Wilder-Taylor has always had a complicated relationship with alcohol.

  • Elizabeth Vargas takes off her perfectly poised reporter mask and shows you the authentic person behind the anchor desk.
  • Reading a few chapters of a recovery-related book each day can help weave your sobriety or moderation goals into your everyday life.
  • Her story is a beautiful reminder of how safety and support can lead the way to incredible healing.
  • Most importantly, you’ll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving on the internet.
  • Hepola spends hungover mornings piecing together the missing hours of the nights before and frequently wakes up with unrecognizable men in unfamiliar places.

Science Daily: Mind & Brain

  • Authors Amanda Eyre Ward and Jardine Libraire met shortly after getting sober.
  • In 1992, Mishka Shubaly survived a mass shooting at his school, his parents divorced, his father abandoned him, and he swore he would right all the wrongs for his mother.
  • 1974 saw the resignation of Richard Nixon for Watergate and the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, all while the disastrous oil crisis wagered on.
  • This is an approachable recipe book using everyday healthy ingredients to make delicious alcohol-free drinks for every occasion.
  • By the time she was an adult in a big city, all she did was drink.
  • For example, he explains why stating alcohol is poison and repeating the tagline “Never Question the Decision” can help you change your unconscious thoughts about alcohol, and shift your mindset.

Woman of Substances: A Journey Into Drugs, Alcohol and Treatment