Best 20 Books About Addiction Recovery to Read in 2020

At the age of 15, Cat Marnell began to unknowingly «murder her life» when she became hooked on the ADHD medication prescribed to her by her psychiatrist father. Based on Fisher’s hugely successful one-woman show, Wishful Drinking is the story of growing up in Hollywood royalty, battling addiction, and dealing with manic depression. Her first memoir is an inside look at her famous parents’ marriage and her own tumultuous love affairs (including her on-again, off-again relationship with Paul Simon).

  • High Achiever is a mind-spinning memoir of how quickly things go wrong and how much hard work it takes to set things right.
  • “Group Activities for Families in Recovery” outlines activities for families that include at least one person struggling with addiction.
  • I wish this book had been around when my wife and I were trying to figure out how to handle our son’s addiction.
  • At age 20, weighing nearly 300 pounds, Mitchell makes the decision to save her own life.
  • The reminder that sober life need not be ascetic or dull is welcome to seasoned veterans of recovery and newcomers alike, but I think the blueprint here for an abundant life of pleasure could be useful for anyone.

Emmet Fox reviews Jesus’ teachings from his sermon and offers practical suggestions for how to implement these teachings into your life. For people looking to expand the spiritual experience and awakening outlined throughout the process of working the steps, this book is a must have. However, beyond simply gaining knowledge about the condition, real recovery means embracing a new, healthier way of life. Recovery from addiction requires self-discovery, motivation and daily emotional and mental self-care.

What’s the Secret to Success in Addiction Recovery?

Nic also penned a memoir, Tweak, revealing that as grisly as his father’s nightmares for him were, the reality of his addiction was far darker. Together, the books were adapted into a 2018 film starring Steve Carrell and Timothée Chalamet. Know My Name by Chanel MillerThis should be compulsory reading in every high school. Miller was long known as Emily Doe, the anonymous victim of a sexual assault at Stanford University and the voice behind a viral victim impact statement that changed the terms of debate around consent, violence and rape.

He worries ceaselessly, continuously anticipating another late-night phone call, from Nic, from an emergency room, from the police. In those stories, the decision to get better often arrives like a bolt of lightning, but this is rarely the case. My own recovery from codependency and alcoholism, which I write https://ecosoberhouse.com/ about in my memoir Good Morning, Destroyer of Men’s Souls, has felt elusive, circuitous, and sometimes rather boring. Since I don’t love the word “journey”, I prefer to think of it as a kind of endurance art, the term performance artists give to work that requires long periods of hardship, solitude or pain.

In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, Dr. Gabor Maté

It contains stories from people who have achieved recovery from substance abuse, including alcohol and drugs. Dr. Gabor Maté has spent decades treating drug addicts in Vancouver and his patients haunt this sprawling, outraged book—the human faces of a failure of medicine, policy, and law. Maté challenges the idea that addiction is a medical disease and that drugs are inherently addictive. Rather, addiction emerges from a confluence of personal history, emotional development, and brain chemistry. For some people, he argues, addiction eases the pain of trauma by replicating the effects of feel-good brain chemicals that the more fortunate of us experienced during a loving childhood. Self-understanding is therefore key to recovery, he contends, and fills the book with positive solutions addicts can apply to themselves.

books for recovering addicts

Our drug and alcohol rehab is built on the cornerstone of care and compassion and accommodates clients and their families from all backgrounds to educate, inform, and create change around substance use disorder. In a secluded mountain hill luxury resort, our facility offers a therapeutic environment and array of clinical modalities to help individuals and their families. Our staff are also multilingual to address the needs of clients from anywhere in the world. For many people, the action stage begins with a process known as detoxification, also known as detox. During detox, all addictive substances are carefully removed from the patient’s body. In this stage, medical professionals navigate a patient through the steps of recovery.

Don’t Let Your Kids Kill You: A Guide for Parents of Drug and Alcohol Addicted Children

A powerful tool when used in conjunction with treatment, the concept pairs motivational techniques, cognitive behavior therapy, and mindfulness strategies. So here are 10 best-selling and/or award-winning books on addiction and recovery. Along with educational insights on substance use disorders, the books provide multiple perspectives from those who have successfully traversed the road to recovery. In a treatment program, patients learn valuable skills that make it easier for them to cope with their feelings of stress and emotional issues that contribute to their addiction.

Díaz’s resilience – and success – in the face of mighty obstacles registers as part luck, part strength, and part audacity. Beloved by Toni MorrisonSethe is haunted, literally and figuratively, by the daughter she killed best books about alcoholism while escaping slavery in this devastating Pulitzer Prize-winning classic. This is a book about the abject horror and howling trauma of slavery, but it’s also about how we metabolise the nightmares of our lives before.

«Allowed me to build a life for myself.»

Most notably, it’s a brutally honest—and hilarious—reflection on the late writer’s path to sobriety. “A Million Little Pieces,” James Frey’s autobiographical novel about alcohol and crack cocaine addiction, is the author’s riveting, first-hand account of an out-of-control life. Aged just 23, Frey finds himself on a plane with no idea how he got there or where he is going. He soon discovers his brother has arranged for him to head to rehab. Resistant to 12-step recovery, Frey finds rehab intensely challenging, yet he persists. After treatment, the recovering addict must work to maintain their recovery.