Addiction Memoirs

Lost and Found: A Sober Living Story is a powerful and inspiring journey of transformation, healing, and hope. In this deeply moving narrative, Dr. Brenda Combs introduces readers to Jennifer—a woman who has lost everything to addiction but finds the courage to reclaim her life inside a sober living home. Through raw honesty and emotional depth, Jennifer’s story reveals the pain of her past, the challenges of recovery, and the strength it takes to rebuild from the ground up. As she confronts trauma, temptation, and self-doubt, she also discovers the power of community, accountability, ...

In Recovered, pastor and author Robby Gallaty tells the story of how God radically saved him from his addictions and called him into a life of discipleship. Robby grew up in a very religious Catholic family who attended church every Sunday and confession on Saturday if needed. Very rarely did he miss a Saturday night dinner and a movie with his parents and sister Lori. You can imagine how devastated they were when Robby stole $15,000 from them to fuel his drug addiction.

The first story Selma Blair Beitner ever heard about herself is that she was a mean, mean baby. With her mouth pulled in a perpetual snarl and a head so furry it had to be rubbed to make way for her forehead, Selma spent years living up to her terrible reputation: biting her sisters, lying spontaneously, getting drunk from Passover wine at the age of seven, and behaving dramatically so that she would be the center of attention. In a memoir that is as wildly funny as it is emotionally shattering, Blair tells the captivating story of growing up and finding her truth.

With three children under five, a set of twins and a newborn, Rachell Brownell wanted to feel like an adult again. So she turned to three bottles of white wine a night. Through wit and honesty, Brownell lets listeners into her world of addiction, but also towards hope. Through examples of community, wisdom, and support, this book provides a map for anyone trying to get through the early stages of recovery.Mommy Doesn’t Drink Here Anymore.

A memoir from the editor of Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger, Negative Space explores Dancyger’s own anger, grief, and artistic inheritance as she sets out to illuminate the darkness her father hid from her, as well as her own.

In the tradition of Blackout and Permanent Midnight, a darkly funny and revealing debut memoir of one woman's 20-year battle with sex, drugs, and alcohol addiction, and what happens when she finally emerges on the other side. Growing up in Beverly Hills, Amy Dresner had it all: a top-notch private-school education, the most expensive summer camps, and even a weekly clothing allowance. But at 24, she started dabbling in meth in San Francisco and unleashed a fiendish addiction monster.

With dark humor, and in crystalline prose, Clune's account of life inside the heroin underground is like no other. Whisking us between the halves of his precarious double life-between the streets of Baltimore and the college classroom, where Clune is a graduate student teaching literature-we spiral along with him as he approaches rock bottom: from nodding off in a row house with a one-armed junkie and a murderous religious freak to having his life threatened in a Chicago jail while facing a felony possession charge.

Gary Barlow is one of the most successful British musicians and songwriters of all time, but 15 years ago, as he himself admits, he hit rock bottom - he was out of shape, out of work, depressed. Food for him had become an addiction, a means not only of comfort but almost of self-medication as he grappled with the cruel twists of fate of musical stardom. In 2003, as he struggled with the disappointment of an underperforming solo career alongside the tireless media taunts; Gary turned to food.

A scorching memoir of a love affair with an addict, weaving personal reckoning with psychology and history to understand the nature of addiction, codependency, and our appetite for obsessive love. "The disease he has is addiction," Nina Renata Aron writes of her boyfriend, K. "The disease I have is loving him."

Behold the final saga in the chronicles of a gay alcoholic's quest for enlightenment, recounting twenty-six years and culminating in the wisdom and gratitude he achieved during those tumultuous decades. Charlie Gray concludes his tale of recovery from addiction and embracing his identity by exploring where it all began and journeying back to the summer of 1996, age ten, on Truman Lake at his family’s quaint fishing resort. A brief glimpse of Charlie’s idyllic childhood unfolds before it is abruptly brought to an end by the untimely death of his mother shortly after his thirteenth ...

One phone call. That's all it took to change Stephanie Wittels Wachs's life forever.... Her younger brother Harris, a star in the comedy world known for his work on shows like Parks and Recreation, had died of a heroin overdose. How do you make sense of such a tragic end to a life of so much hilarious brilliance? In beautiful, unsentimental, and surprisingly funny prose, Stephanie Wittels Wachs alternates between her brother's struggle with addiction, which she learned about three days before her wedding, and the first year after his death, in all its emotional devastation.

Endless ice. Thin air. The threat of dropping into nothingness thousands of feet below. This is the climb Silvia Vasquez-Lavado braves in her pulse-raising memoir. A Latina hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, privately, she was hanging by a thread. Deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child, she started climbing. She then took her biggest pain as a survivor to the biggest mountain: Everest.

Helen Knott, a highly accomplished Indigenous woman, seems to have it all. But in her memoir, she offers a different perspective. In My Own Moccasins is an unflinching account of addiction, intergenerational trauma, and the wounds brought on by sexual violence. It is also the story of sisterhood, the power of ceremony, the love of family, and the possibility of redemption.

With searing honesty, Wasted documents Mark's descent into the very depths of addiction and criminality. Homeless and hooked on heroin and crack, no one, least of all Mark, believed he would survive. And yet he somehow found the strength to pull through, and now runs his own thriving tree-surgery business, employing and helping other recovering addicts.

New York Times best-selling author, comedian, and actor Patton Oswalt shares his entertaining memoir about coming of age as a performer and writer in the late '90s while obsessively watching classic films at the legendary New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Between 1995 and 1999, Patton Oswalt lived with an unshakeable addiction. It wasn't drugs, alcohol, or sex. It was film.

Lynn grew up the carefree daughter of a Miami undercover narcotics agent—until her dad snuck out of the house in the dark of night without a glance back. She never knew what happened to her father until she was in high school, and he was in prison for drug smuggling. By then, Lynn had developed a dangerous drug and alcohol habit of her own. It was the perfect setup for her to latch onto the only connection to her dad that remained when he was paroled from prison—cocaine.

Anthony Bourdain didn’t just eat his way across the world—he narrated it, dissected it, and ultimately got devoured by it. Anthony Bourdain: A Guy Who Should Be Dead is an unflinching portrait of the man behind the myth: heroin addict, father, chef, celebrity, and loner. With a sardonic tone that echoes Hemingway and a scalpel-sharp narrative, this book strips away the glossy TV persona and reveals the fractured, compelling human beneath. From his suburban New Jersey childhood and the drug-fueled chaos of New York’s culinary underbelly, to the accidental explosion of Kitchen ...

When actress Claudia Christian flees a troubled childhood and moves to Hollywood at age 17, she steps through the looking glass into another world. From the set of Dallas to her starring role on the sci-fi series Babylon 5, Claudia's affairs with billionaires, supermodels, rock stars, and celebrities are mixed with shootings, stalking, heartbreak, and betrayal. Hollywood life takes its toll on Claudia as she descends into alcohol addiction and a desperate battle to reclaim her life.

The founder of Recovery Management Agency—the world’s first agency devoted to helping addicts heal their addictions by reawakening their souls—uses her knowledge of depth psychology and her personal experience as a recovering addict to help you reconnect with soul, find meaning and live your purpose.

Nile Wilson has always been one of life's winners; a charismatic young man with an Olympic bronze medal in the Horizontal Bar at just 21 years old. But after a serious neck injury, forcing him to retire early and miss taking part in the Tokyo Olympics, Nile's world fell apart. Swamped with depression, anxiety and addictive behaviours, his mental health went over a cliff. Over the past few years, Nile has had to face down his demons and accept his new reality, and this is the book he wish he'd been given before it all began.