Addiction Memoirs

I became addicted to heroin at the age of 18. I thought my life was over, but here I am with a story to be told, and hopefully with a message in there for anyone who is struggling with addiction, suicide, and depression that there is light at the end of the tunnel. My journey was not easy, and there are scars both physical and mental to prove it, but I am the man I am today because of these times. If this book can help one person, then I feel my struggles with addiction won't have been in vain.

At the age of 15, Kelle Groom found that alcohol allowed her to connect with people and explore intimacy in ways she'd never been able to experience before. She began drinking before class, often blacked out at bars, and fell into destructive relationships. At 19, already an out-of-control alcoholic, she was pregnant. Accepting the heartbreaking fact that she was incapable of taking care of her son herself, she gave him up for adoption to her aunt and uncle. When he was nine months old, the boy was diagnosed with leukemia....

Cut back or quit drinking entirely…fast! Are you worried you're drinking too much? Has alcohol become a major part of your life? Do you fear it's affecting your health? Your relationships? Your career? Millions of people are dependent on alcohol to self-medicate trauma, stress, depression, or succumbing to peer pressure to drink more than they want. They'd love to cut-back but fear losing the buzz they associate with alcohol, and mistakenly believe that a sober life will doom them to a life of loss, boredom, pain, and misery. Cassandra Gaisford, a New Zealand-based health counsellor, ...

The new face of risky drinking is female. The problem: a global epidemic of bingeing. The solution: a brave new approach to female recovery. Eight years ago, Ann Dowsett Johnston was an award-winning journalist and vice-principal of McGill University. In private, she was wrestling the demon that had undone her own mother; the same demon increasing numbers of women are now battling across the world: alcohol.

As kids, we all dream of becoming successful in life, whether as doctors, lawyers, or corporate employees. Chris had these dreams, too. Like every other child, he wanted the best out of life. But while he was planning his future, life had its own plan. This is the true story of Chris, whose life took an unexpected turn, leading him on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth.

Hide and Seek: A Dad’s Journey from Soulless Addiction to Sole Custody is the story of a three-year-old girl being raised by drug-addict parents. This sobering account is told by her father, a washed-up musician. When his wife kidnaps their daughter and serves him a bogus restraining order, he must decide between deepening his drug excesses or protecting his daughter from her mother’s reckless choices.

Robin by Dave Itzkoff shows how Robin Williams struggled mightily with addiction and depression - topics he discussed openly while performing and during interviews - and with a debilitating condition at the end of his life that affected him in ways his fans never knew. Drawing on more than a hundred original interviews with family, friends and colleagues, as well as extensive archival research, Robin is a fresh and original look at a man whose work touched so many lives.

Within a one year time frame, in the United States, there were 67,367 deaths reported due to drug overdose. This is just one human's story. She could have been number 67,368, but she was spared. Melissa and Christina have never spoken in depth about Melissa’s addiction. By the time Melissa went into recovery, she had been using it for over 20 years.

All I ever wanted was to be loved and accepted. That's all. Now I am strung out on heroin, more vulnerable than ever, and clinically depressed. My entire existence is controlled by heroin and the need to escape reality. My rationality is being dominated, paralyzed, and defeated by another entity.

This is a funny look at the world of smoking and what smokers go through: the stigma, the stereotyping, and the general malaise of the uncaring nonsmoker. Get a few laughs, but if you're willing, get some very helpful tips to, once and for all, kick the habit. Take it from a smoker. You can't learn from someone who's never done it, can you?

An elite competitive figure skater growing up, Keri Blakinger poured herself into the sport, even competing at nationals. But when her skating partnership ended abruptly, her world shattered. With all the intensity she saved for the ice, she dove into self-destruction. From her first taste of heroin, the next nine years would be a blur—living on the streets, digging for a vein, selling drugs and sex, plunging off a bridge when it all became too much, all while trying to hold herself together enough to finish her degree at Cornell.

There have been two great loves in Matt Rowland Hill’s life so far: Jesus and heroin. Hill grew up the son of a minister in a strict Baptist church. After a crisis of loss of faith, he obsessively turned to literature before becoming addicted to crack and heroin in his early twenties. Hill’s addiction stretched over a decade, culminating in a suicide attempt and weeks in a secure psychiatric unit. After undergoing rehabilitation, which forced him to confront the religion he had spent his whole life running from, he finally got clean.

A riveting and raw story of how one woman overcame alcoholism and mental illness and broke free from the genetic blueprint of addiction that demonized her family for generations. She sets you in a front row seat as she shares her life story and experiences, which show the strength, determination and courage of how she refused to continue with this way of life, and how she would do whatever it took to protect her children from being exposed to a life of addiction which is so normalized and influenced within society.

The year 2013 was my year of Job. In the Bible, Job was a very wealthy man with a large family who loved God. For reasons Job did not understand, he lost his family, wealth, businesses, and then health--quickly and violently. For about nine months, he was lost to grief and despaired even of life. But God. But God.

As a grieving mother, author L A Perdue learned the hard way that drug addiction comes in many forms. The most notable addictive drugs are meth and fentanyl, but she discovered that one can’t discount prescription drugs like Adderall. In For the Love of Meghan, Perdue shares the story of her daughter, Meghan, and how her use of Adderall came with deadly consequences. From Meghan’s birth to her youth and into young adulthood, Perdue remembers the special moments of their life together.

Born in Manchester in 1977, Anthony Kavanagh's rise to fame was stratospheric, scoring a record deal at the age of just eighteen and winning the much-coveted Smash Hits Male Artist of the Year Award in 1997, all the while achieving top ten hits, appearing on countless magazine covers, performing on Top of the Pops and gigging alongside the Spice Girls. The stuff that dreams are made of. But Anthony - or Kavana as he came to be known - was also trying to keep his sexuality a secret while navigating his way through an industry where image was everything.

An adventurous and free-spirited young man, Winston "Win" Williams, was destined for adventure. He spent years sailing around the world, experiencing life many only see through the movies or TV. From Tahiti to New Guinea and the far east, to the Indian Ocean, Africa, and the Philippines, Win had it all under a cloud of sails. Until he didn't. This dramatic memoir brings us from the highs of life on the seas to the lows of addiction and, devastatingly, losing it all. Win shares openly and honestly his experience of recovery from alcoholism, and the restoration of relationships and a new life...

Four psychiatric wards. Three rehabs. Two jail cells. And a suicide attempt. Hannah was told she would not make it to 25 with the way she was living. She had struggled with mental illness her entire life, but at 22,her demons came to a head at the grips of severe substance abuse, life-changing trauma, and two major deaths in her life. Hannah’s struggles land her places no one ever hopes to grace; jail and psych wards lead her to the brink of death. Running out of options, she’s left with two choices: live or die.

He Was Always There takes you on Misty’s journey through trauma, addiction, and abuse and how against all odds, she was redeemed by God’s grace and restored by His love. We’ve been called to a life of freedom yet are often held back by the pain of our past. Misty has had a lot of “past” to overcome, from rape, to prostitution, to a decade of addiction, losing a child, and much more. Join her as she shares stories of God’s providence throughout her life that will not only inspire you but give you a greater level of faith in your own life.

The story is about Sue, who started out living in a trailer with her uneducated, teenage parents in the backwoods in the 1960s. Moving out on her own at 15, she made "headline news" with record-breaking car sales in a man's world in the late '70s and '80s. Sue had to hang tough as the jealous men were sure she had slept with her customers to make so many car deals. The office women with college degrees resented giving a high school dropout pay checks exceeding their own.