11 Must-Read Books for Families of Drug Addicts

I believe this book does a great job of helping the parents of children using drugs or alcohol understand that it is not OK not to light themselves on fire to keep their children warm. Annie Grace left her career as a marketing professional in order to share her journey with alcohol addiction. The result is “This Naked Mind,” a guide to help people living with https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/how-to-write-a-goodbye-letter-to-addiction/ alcohol addiction to discover other things that make them happy besides drinking alcohol. In his book, “When AA Doesn’t Work For You,” Ellis explains that people living with alcohol addiction experience irrational thoughts and beliefs that can make it difficult to stop drinking alcohol. I have now made my own podcast episodes about my journey to sobriety.

• 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.
• Eventually saved by her family, King writes with equal parts sensitivity and humor about redemption and compassion for others.
• In this book, authors James Robert Milam and Katherine Ketcham break down common myths about alcohol addiction and explain some of the biological processes and pathways toward recovery.
• Whether or not we fully agree with that concept, it still proves to be a great read.
• 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.

This is the book for you if you’re looking for masterful prose and an important message. More than just a tale of addiction to recovery, this is Karr’s story about the necessity of faith and love along the journey. You may have heard about Hunter Biden before (after all, he is the son of the 46th President of the United States of America) and maybe even know that he published a memoir about his struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. This vulnerable, sobering book is a deep look into gangs and guns, near-death experiences, sex work, masculinity, composite fathers, the concept of “hustle,” and the destructure power of addiction. It is all told through the eyes of Jackson, his family, and his community. Maybe you’ve been leaning on alcohol too much to try to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Best memoir

Why else would I have been mesmerized by When a Man Loves a Woman or 28 Days in my early 20s? These movies and books let me know I was not alone, that there were other people walking around who drank like I did. The other group is ACOA, which stands for Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families.

When you read any Masters or Ph.D. level textbooks on counseling theories and strategies, you find strategies utilized in Alcoholics Anonymous. Looking back to the psychoanalytic theory developed by Sigmund Freud and the collective unconscious developed by Carl Jung, there are similarities to the suggestions best alcohol recovery books of Alcoholics Anonymous. Readers say this book flows nicely and makes an easy read, despite its length. People call it compassionate, informative, and an essential resource. Readers say it’s a quick and easy read, despite the heavy subject matter, and many people found it both touching and useful.

Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction

As a reader and television viewer, I am drawn to stories that do the same. My fascination with reading and writing gritty stories about queer characters figuring their lives out stems from my own confused upbringing. I have written four full-length contemporary fiction novels that all put the main character’s experiences and choices under a microscope. Additionally, while I didn’t set out to try to destigmatize therapy and friends talking openly about their struggles, reviewers have pointed out that those are themes in my books.

• Prolific, brilliant memoirist Mary Karr shines a light on the dark years she spent descending into alcoholism and drug use as a young writer, wife, and mother.
• Here are some other books we believe will provide you with strong insight into addiction and the obstacles that both families and drug addicts face.
• As we stated above, alcoholics are addicts, and their drug of choice is alcohol.

Al-Anon support groups and individual and marriage counseling can help parents. As we believe and as the book suggests, you may not have control over the addict directly, and you do have control over how you cope, react, and treat yourself concerning your loved one’s addiction. Beautiful Boy is a good book and movie that does an excellent job of bringing the reader or viewer into the life of a substance user and the affected family. One of the many differences is that family and friends of loved ones suffering from other diseases do not have to set boundaries, consequences, and accountability for the patient to seek help. People with diseases other than addiction often fight for the cure and the solution.

An intervention is not about how to control the substance user; it is about how to let go of believing you can.

A wise man once said that the only problem with self-help books is starting with the self. Written by addiction counselor Genia Calvin, this book offers a helpful resource for teaching children about substance use and addiction in a format that’s easy to understand. In “Double Double,” mystery writer Martha Grimes and her son, Ken, share their experiences with alcohol addiction.

She’s just someone who uses alcohol to muster up courage, and well, survive life. This is just how it has always been since her introduction to Southern Comfort when she was just fourteen. Especially not when you’re a crucial part of the cultural phenomenon called Star Wars. Things get even more interesting when you have to do all this while battling manic depression, addiction, and visiting all sorts of mental institutions as a result. This is a darkly comic book about the slow road through recovery, really growing up, and being someone that gets back up after screwing up. But wherever that journey starts, these memoirs prove that struggle can lead to something beautiful and healing in the end.

What happens when an ambitious young woman is keeping a secret of addiction? High-profile writer Cat Marnell answers the question in the gripping memoir of her life as she battles bulimia on top of an addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs. In his follow-up to his first memoir, Tweak, which dealt with his journey into meth addiction, Sheff details his struggle to stay clean. In and out of rehab, he falls into relapse, engaging in toxic relationships and other self-destructive behaviors that threaten to undo the hard-won progress he’s made.

They also offer tips to support loved ones and ways to tell if you or someone you love may have alcohol use disorder. Pete Hamill grew up in Brooklyn with parents who immigrated to the United States. His father also experienced alcohol addiction, which helped shape his view that drinking was a manly thing to do, and early in life, he began drinking alcohol himself. When I started drinking—champagne at a party with my parents, when I was 14—I was not thinking about preventing my own addiction. I was not thinking about how addiction has popped up in numerous branches of my family tree like poison fruit.

How to Grow Up: A Memoir by Michelle Tea

It was the beginning of using externals to fix an internal problem. A 74-year old Native American found me at ten months in recovery. He showed me a path to follow, including opening a house of healing for other women. His teachings, spiritual principles, and a lot of work helped me achieve 32 years in recovery. As a child, Helaina Hovitz was a very close witness to the attack to the World Trade Center on 9/11.

The information on this website is not intended to be a substitute for, or to be relied upon as, medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a physician or qualified health provider with questions regarding a medical condition. I did many things I am deeply ashamed of, and reading her book taught me that I am not alone. I very much related to her always feeling “less than” in normal life, and only becoming confident and alive once she poured alcohol down her throat. When we aren’t posting here, we build programs to help people quit drinking.