Recovery Memoirs

“The Devil Inside Me” is a gripping memoir by Joshua T. Berglan that offers an unflinching look into a life marked by addiction, betrayal, and the relentless quest for redemption. Berglan’s candid narrative reveals the depths of his struggles, including multiple incarcerations, bankruptcies, overdoses, and battles with HIV and homelessness. This powerful account delves into the consequences of living a double life and defying one’s true purpose. Berglan’s story serves as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the transformative power of vulnerability and honesty. ...

Trapped. Isolated. Desperate. These were constant realities as I lived with my three young sons, fearing what the next minute might hold in my destructive marriage. Was I making the right decisions about caring for myself and my children? Was I being selfish or making excuses? Surely divorce was wrong...right? As I became frighteningly aware of my circumstances, God began showing me in big and little ways that He was with us. Through daily interactions with friends, family, nature, and His Word, God strengthened me, gave me courage to face each day, and provided a way of escape. Readers of ...

A best seller in its native Canada, Drunk Mom is a gripping, brutally honest memoir of motherhood in the shadow of alcoholism. Three years after giving up drinking, Jowita Bydlowska found herself throwing back a glass of champagne like it was ginger ale. It was a special occasion: a party celebrating the birth of her first child. It also marked Bydlowska's immediate, full-blown return to crippling alcoholism.

Marc Lewis's relationship with drugs began in a New England boarding school where, as a bullied and homesick fifteen-year-old, he made brief escapes from reality by way of cough medicine, alcohol, and marijuana. In Berkeley, California, in its hippie heyday, he found methamphetamine and LSD and heroin. He sniffed nitrous oxide in Malaysia and frequented Calcutta's opium dens. Ultimately, though, his journey took him where it takes most addicts: into a life of addiction, desperation, deception, and crime.

While his wife and two-year-old daughter watched TV in the living room, David Poses was in the kitchen, measuring the distance from his index finger to his armpit. He needed to be sure he could pull the trigger with a shotgun barrel in his mouth. Twenty-six inches. Thirty-two years old. More than a decade in a double life fueled by depression and heroin.

What could possibly be “lucky” about addiction? Absolutely nothing, thought Laura McKowen when drinking brought her to her knees. As she puts it, she “kicked and screamed . . . wishing for something - anything - else” to be her issue. The people who got to drink normally, she thought, were so damn lucky. But in the midst of early sobriety, when no longer able to anesthetize her pain and anxiety, she realized that she was actually the lucky one. Lucky to feel her feelings, live honestly, really be with her daughter, change her legacy.

"A great spiritual autobiography, a worthy companion to books like The Seven Storey Mountain and the Autobiography of a Yogi. The book is so vividly and poetically written that I felt as if I was reading a kind of spiritual ‘On the Road.’ It sits well with Kenneth Rose's scholarly work on mysticism, as it contains so many beautiful descriptions of his own mystical experiences. I hope that the book gains the wide readership it deserves." Steve Taylor PhD. author of The Leap and The Calm Center." . . . will resonate with readers who are interested in and struggle with the search for ...

Beginning innocently enough in his 20s, Neal Pollack discovers that pot makes everything - food, music, sex - better. Getting married, having a kid, and enjoying professional success didn't tamp down Pollack's addiction. As cannabis grew stronger and more widely available, Pollack's dependence was shadowed by the expansion and acceptance of the marijuana Big Business. Sober after joining a 12-step program, Neal outed himself publicly as a marijuana addict in a 2018 New York Times op-ed piece.

Raven St. Clair writes a heart-wrenching account of her life as an alcoholic. She graphically recounts her journey from teen to adult in the grips of alcohol at every step. Through college life, marriage, motherhood, and the pain and dysfunction caused by alcohol. Amid shattered relationships and squandered opportunities she is unable to resist the allure of drinking. This is an ultimately hopeful journey and is a recommended read for anyone who is struggling with alcohol addiction.

Josh Hamilton was the first player chosen in the first round of the 1999 baseball draft. He was destined to be one of those rare "high-character" superstars. But in 2001, working his way from the minors to the majors, all of the plans for Josh went off the rails in a moment of weakness. What followed was a four-year nightmare of drugs and alcohol, estrangement from friends and family, and his eventual suspension from baseball.

I take the reader with me on my journey, as I pack all my belongings and finally leave my abusive home aged twenty-one. But although I am away from my controlled home environment, I cannot escape my bad memories. I am still living the terrible nightmares of my violent abusive childhood, which are embedded deep in the recesses of my mind. The horrors of my past affect my daily struggles to fit into society. Unable to cope with a normal life outside my dysfunctional family home, I drift from place to place trying to find sanctuary from my past but end up down a path of self-destruction, and ...

When he was two years old, Hunter Biden was badly injured in a car accident that killed his mother and baby sister. In 2015, he suffered the devastating loss of his beloved big brother, Beau, who died of brain cancer at the age of 46. These hardships were compounded by the collapse of his marriage and a years-long battle with drug and alcohol addiction.

Victoria Vanstone grew up in 1980s England in a happy home full of laughter, booze and a disturbing amount of fancy-dress parties. From her youthful days downing cheap wine at the local park to dodging disastrous relationships, her reliable mate alcohol was never far from reach. Eventually, Victoria found herself with a husband and a child on the way. After sobering up for her first pregnancy, becoming a boring, bottom-wiping, cleaning machine meant she soon returned to her binge-drinking ways, and had to grapple anew with the habits and beliefs that had gone unchecked since childhood.

After twenty-four years of daily drinking, Ed Wyrick hit his bottom and tossed out his last bottle of vodka. As a high school counselor in a rural county in the middle of the Bible belt, he feared for his job if he revealed his addiction, so he tried detoxing on his own. When he gave up and surrendered to a treatment center, doctors said he was lucky to have survived. Three months later, he quit smoking cigarettes. Eighteen months after that, he’d lost seventy pounds and was running five miles a day. More than twelve years have passed, and he remains free of alcohol, cigarettes, fat, and ...

Ready to ditch the bottle and embrace a life that doesn't require a constant buzz? Dive into "Uncorked: A No-BS Guide from Boozy Mess to Sober Success," your hilarious roadmap to sobriety. April Adams spills the tea on her messy journey from hot mess to sober queen, serving up a cocktail of brutal honesty and side-splitting humor. This ain't your grandma's self-help book. "Uncorked" is packed with real talk, f-bombs, and practical advice for dodging temptation, surviving sober socials, and building a kick-ass life without liquid courage. From "Oh shit, I drunk-texted my ex" to "Holy crap, I...

They say the first taste of addiction often comes disguised as relief, and for Kevin Murray, that disguise was an innocent-looking white pill. Pills and Me: My Spiral into Addiction is an unflinchingly raw and personal account of a young man’s descent into opioid addiction—a journey from curiosity to survival in a world ravaged by a seemingly harmless but relentless beast. As Kevin tells it, his addiction didn’t begin with a reckless choice. It began with exhaustion, loneliness, and a desire to feel anything other than the crushing weight of his circumstances. From his first Percocet ...

Brooke Siem was among the first generation of minors to be prescribed antidepressants. Initially diagnosed and treated in the wake of her father’s sudden death, this psychiatric intervention sent a message that something was pathologically wrong with her and that the only “fix” was medication. As a teenager, she stepped into the hazy world of antidepressants just at the time when she was forming the foundation of her identity. For the following fifteen years, every situation she faced was seen through the lens of brokenness.

At the start of this remarkable story of recovery, healing, and redemption, Ginger Gaffney answers a call to help retrain the troubled horses at an alternative prison ranch in New Mexico, a facility run entirely by the prisoners. The horses are scavenging through the dumpsters, kicking and running down the residents when they bring the trash out after meals. One horse is severely injured. The horses and residents arrive at the ranch broken in one way or many: the horses are defensive and terrified, while the residents, some battling addictions, are emotionally and physically shattered.

He says he loves you. So...why does he do that? You've asked yourself this question again and again. Now you have the chance to see inside the minds of angry and controlling men---and to change your life. In this groundbreaking book, a counselor who specializes in working with abusive men shows you how to improve, survive, or leave an abusive relationship.

From earliest experimentation to habitual excess to full-blown abuse, 24-year-old Koren Zailckas leads us through her experience of a terrifying trend among young girls, exploring how binge drinking becomes routine, how it becomes "the usual". With the stylistic freshness of a poet and the dramatic gifts of a novelist, Zailckas describes her first sip at 14, alcohol poisoning at 16, blacked-out sexual experience at 19, and total disorientation after waking up in an unfamiliar New York City apartment at 22.