Addiction Memoirs

This book is about my life of addiction and living through it. I have had ups and downs and lost many friends. I am in recovery, and the work never stops. Every day you think about it. I have learned to rely on the tools I was given and the support of my family. This is my story.

The Romeo & Juliet Delusion provides inspiration to anyone whose life has been touched by addiction or domestic violence. Abbott relies on raw and uninhibited storytelling to convey the methods she used to explore healing and freedom from trauma. Abbott's hope is that by authentically sharing her story, she can help to change the lives of people in similar situations and inspire others to view addiction and domestic abuse with compassion and curiosity.

Kathleen O’Neill courageously chronicles her journey through the turbulent realms of bipolar disorder, addiction, and recovery. With raw honesty and resilience, Kathleen shares the battles she fought within herself and against social stigmas, laying bare her struggles, triumphs, and the moments of grace that shaped her healing. This memoir offers a compelling look at the complex layers of mental health , the strength of the human spirit, and the transformative power of hope.

In 2014, novelist Leslie Schwartz was sentenced to 90 days in Los Angeles County Jail for a DUI and battery of an officer. It was the most harrowing and holy experience of her life. Following a 414-day relapse into alcohol and drug addiction after more than a decade sober, Schwartz was sentenced and served her time with only six months' sobriety. The damage she inflicted that year upon her friends, her husband, her daughter, and herself was nearly impossible to fathom. Incarceration might have ruined her altogether, if not for the stories that sustained her while she was behind bars.

Precisely plotting the slippery slope of a heroin addict's existence, The Hummingbird Kiss paints a bleak picture but still manages to offer a ray of hope. The '70s are young, and 18-year-old Trish is a newlywed. When a Florida judge sentences her junkie husband to ten years for stealing stereos, she immediately seeks out a fix, and before she knows it she's hooked. There follows a long sojourn as she and her friends work small scams to score, head to California in search of better highs, move back to Florida, shoot up and nod off every chance they get — until death gets some of them.

I am a heroin addict, and I will do anything - and I mean absolutely anything - to get my next fix. Nothing else matters at this point. I would rather die than be dope sick in jail again.

Stanice Anderson, motivational speaker and author of 12-Step Programs: A Resource Guide for Helping Professionals, delivers a personal guide to dealing with failure and turning to triumphs. By examining her own obstacles, Anderson relates to problems that many people face today.

Neil 'Razor' Ruddock tells the inspiring and uplifting story of how he faced the battle of his life: to become a different person. In this inspiring and uplifting memoir, Neil Ruddock charts his toxic journey of self-destruction, a path littered with food addiction, plummeting self-confidence and a dangerous relationship with drink which took him to the brink of death.

Hermosa Beach, California, in the mid-1960s. Sun, surf, and sand castles along The Strand to a soundtrack of “Fun, Fun, Fun.” But the hang-loose life of the locals was soon being drowned out—by a social storm able to turn even the most perfect wave into a brutal riptide. How do you go from planning vacations and evaluating investments to planning prison visits and evaluating defense pleas? How do you watch your surfer-champion sons turn into drug lords? Inmates? How do you watch your entire family die, one by one? Yet never stop fighting. It takes a rare and special person: Karl McMillen.

Andrew Brobyn's relationship was in shambles before he took the terrible acid that sent him on an almost decade-long journey seeking redemption. His immediate plans following university were to liquidate his illicit assets, sell his client list, pack up shop, and retire to his parents' home in Toronto, while he figured out what to do with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and a quarter million in cash. As his drug use and bipolar disorder spiral, his situation gets stranger and stranger, taking him from his university campus to strip clubs, psych wards, and the slammer.

Renegade MD: A Doctor's Stories from the Streets is a powerful and inspiring memoir by Dr. Susan Partovi, a renowned street doctor who has dedicated her life to treating the impoverished around the world and people experiencing homelessness on LA's Skid Row. Through her stories, Dr. Partovi takes us on a journey to the heart of the challenges faced by those living on the streets, and shines a light on her unwavering commitment to advocate for social justice and to provide compassionate care to some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

Truths from an Unreliable Witness is a fiercely honest and wryly funny memoir of melancholy, love, marriage, the loss of love and marriage, homelessness, of hotel rooms strewn with empty mini-bar bottles of vodka, of waking from a two-week coma, of putrid drug dens and using a jungle to confront yourself. It is about hitting rock bottom and then realising you are only halfway down. Ultimately, it's about hanging on to your last straw of sanity and finding laughter in the darkest of times. You may want to sit down for this....

From Bob Beckel, the popular co-host of The Five on Fox News Channel, a deeply moving, redemptive memoir about his life as a political operative and diplomat, his long struggle with alcohol and drugs, and his unlikely journey to finding faith. Growing up poor in an abusive home, Bob Beckel learned to be a survivor: To avoid conflict, mask his feelings, and to lie - all skills that served him well in Washington, where he would become the youngest-ever Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and manage Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign.

On one of the rare occasions he wasn't incarcerated, Floyd met Nancy, a golden-haired goddess, the love of his life. Given the choice between loving her and being the greatest bank robber in America, he chose Nancy without hesitation. But before he went straight, he just needed to pull off one last job....

In 16 brilliantly observed true stories, Sam Harris emerges as a natural humorist in league with David Sedaris, Chelsea Handler, Carrie Fisher, and Steve Martin, but with a voice uniquely his own. Praised by the Chicago Sun-Times for his "manic, witty commentary", and with a storytelling talent the New York Times calls " New Yorker - worthy," he puts a comedic spin on full-disclosure episodes from his own colorful life. What better place to find painfully funny material than in growing up gay, gifted, and ambitious in the heart of the Bible belt?

After struggling with anxiety and depression during her formative years, Margy turned to alcohol to self-medicate and quieten her inner turmoil. Through two failed marriages and fractured relationships, a teaching career spanning 32 years, and two children, Margy finally kicked the wine witch to the curb and found her own voice.

The weird, wacky and wonderful betting exploits of an unconventional gambler who takes the biggest risk of his life to give up his day job and try to make a living on chance. The Gambler reveals the highs and lows, the joy and despair, and the sheer lunacy of someone willing to risk it all on the most outlandish outcomes, from betting on the winner of Eurovision and Strictly to whether a pair of pandas might mate.

Incurable Hope is a loving mother's memoir of her only child's disease of addiction and overcoming the multiple traumas he endured. This book examines how substance use disorder, mental health, and trauma can collide with the legal and medical systems. More importantly, it is a survival guide, a resource guide, and a desperately needed tour guide through the labyrinth of addiction.

Part Oz, Shawshank Redemption, and Orange Is the New Black, this true, warts-and-all, David vs. Goliath tale is about a journalist/addict/alcoholic whose five prison-mates ready him for the outside world, while taking on the prison industrial complex of 2018.

From an early age, author Tom Ufert can remember his grandmother proclaiming that adversity builds character. At the time, he didn't completely understand what it meant-or know that he would actually live it. In Adversity Builds Character, Ufert shares the events that altered and shaped his life and shows how, with God's help, he was able to survive, thrive, and inspire others.