When I worked in beauty, Cat was a beauty editor at Lucky and xoJane.com, so I knew of her. I found this book uncomfortable at times and very funny at other times. It is the real deal and Cat is a talented writer, but most of all a survivor. I really liked this book because it focuses a lot on her spiritual crisis and how it related to her alcoholism.
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What was meant to be a positive and happy change led to depression, which she self-medicated with drinking, eventually consuming over a bottle of wine a day. 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. To vote on existing books from the list, beside each book there is a link vote for this book clicking it will add that book to your votes.
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2024 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist
- Employing an integrative, 7-step program for addiction, The Addiction Recovery Skills Workbook helps readers to better understand the roots of their substance misuse issues.
- In addition to personal stories, many of these books delve deep into the personal and societal psychology of drinking and drug use.
- Beyond the camaraderie of knowing you’re not alone, these books offer practical guidance about the road to sobriety (or your road to changing your relationship with drugs and alcohol).
- He viscerally paints the picture of the hope-tainted despair, anguish, and havoc that addiction wreaks on an entire family.
- Along with educational insights on substance use disorders, the books provide multiple perspectives from those who have successfully traversed the road to recovery.
- She also nests the stories of ordinary people who have dealt with addiction into the mix, changing their names to preserve Alcoholics Anonymous–enforced obscurity, creating an expansive, generous collage.
Jamison set out to write a different sort of addiction memoir, and she wrote one of the most exhaustively researched, lyrical, and thoughtful additions to that canon in recent years. The book flags only when she reaches for universality instead of focuses on writing her own story, which is already an expansive account of a woman confronting her addiction and her obsession with writers who drink. When I first read this book over ten years ago it felt like I was reading my own journal (if my journal was written in incredibly eloquent prose). I almost wanted to snap it shut, but instead finished it in one day and have read it at least three more times since.
- Instead, she went against the advice of her doctor to seek out holistic options.
- The Recovering contains lively prose, and while the framework is that of an expansive investigation into the history and mythos of how addiction intersects with art and life, Jamison’s storytelling skill mostly keeps it from feeling like a tract.
- Whether you’ve been to treatment, you’re contemplating rehab, or your loved one is struggling with substance misuse, the more tools you have in your arsenal the better.
- 2000’s Cherry picked up the story by showing Karr as an adolescent, already dabbling with drugs and profoundly lacking any sense of belonging.
Reframe Your Shame: Experience Freedom from What Holds You Back
Next you’ve chosen to recommend Tove Ditlevsen’s Dependency, the third book in her Copenhagen Trilogy. It was first published in Danish in the 1970s, but has only recently been translated into English by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favela Goldman. I’ll mention some more in relation to the books I’ve chosen, but these are, I think, the four most fundamental ones.
- But Ditlevsen’s single conventional moment also, I think, underlines her originality.
- Wurtzel reveals how drugs fueled her post-breakout period, describing with unbearable specificity how her doctor’s prescription of Ritalin, intended to help her function, only brought her down.
- But the experiences of those addicted differ vastly, based on race, class, the substances in question, the time and place.
- The fact that even a great artist like Ditlevsen can capitulate to such dictates, if only once, demonstrates how powerful they are.
- Books diverging from the genre’s hallmarks are already easy to find.
Whether you’re struggling with addiction and are looking for stories to inspire sobriety, or you simply value reading about the topic, these memoirs will make you laugh, cry, and evoke emotions that only works of nonfiction can bring about. I worked with Erin on a deeply personal essay when she was an editor at Ravishly and was so excited when her memoir was published. Though we used different drugs and came from different backgrounds, our stories were similar, as are most addicts. We use to get rid of the pain, the shame, the anxiety/depression, whatever ails us. We find best memoirs about addiction reprieve through our addictions, but find a loving life in recovery.
