Books On Sober Living

The theme of overcoming adversity is both compelling and universal. Since its publication in 2006, Eat, Pray, Love has become a global sensation. But despite the fact that Elizabeth Gilbert’s debut is now cemented solidly in the zeitgeist, it still rises to the top of the pack as one of the most worthwhile biographical works in the genre. The audiobook, narrated by the author herself, takes the listener on Gilbert’s journey of self-discovery following a succession of earth-shattering life changes that included a divorce and crushing depression. Choosing to take a radical step back from her life at home, Gilbert travels to Italy, India, and Indonesia on a quest to reconnect with her true self, writing about what she learns in the process. Gilbert’s gentle, friendly demeanor welcomes the listener into her journey and all of the hopes, fears, and failures she encountered throughout.

• I did many things I am deeply ashamed of, and reading her book taught me that I am not alone.
• Ditlevsen’s failure of nerve, causing her to wrap up three volumes of the most trenchant and unillusioned autobiography ever written with a feeble daydream, is easily explained.
• I very consciously looked to Karr for inspiration in how to write candidly yet lovingly about an imperfect family.
• But wherever that journey starts, these memoirs prove that struggle can lead to something beautiful and healing in the end.

I thought my party-girl ways were so glamourous, but it was really sad and unfulfilling, despite the glitz and glamour. I too was a high-functioning professional with a drinking and cocaine addiction. My addiction always took me to new lows, and cost me many jobs over the years. When we aren’t posting here, we build programs to help people quit drinking. With incredible wit and skill, Sacha Scobie manages to tell you both what alcohol used to mean for her and how her sober life is going now. She relied on alcohol, so now that this is no longer an option she has to re-evaluate everything in her life, which leads to some great and very witty observations on her newfound life.

And, 3 books we think you will enjoy!

“Your sober date changes, but that’s all that changes. You know everything you knew before, as long as you were able to fight your way back without dying, you learn a lot.” Candid about his relapses — he has been to rehab 15 times over the years — Perry has become well-versed on the tools necessary to maintain sobriety. “I’m pretty healthy now,” he says, before joking, “I’ve got to not go to the gym much more, because I don’t want to only be able to play superheroes. But no, I’m a pretty healthy guy right now.” At one terrifying point during his Friends reign, Perry was taking 55 Vicodin a day and was down to 128 pounds. “If the police came over to my house and said, ‘If you drink tonight, we’re going to take you to jail,’ I’d start packing. I couldn’t stop because the disease and the addiction is progressive. So it gets worse and worse as you grow older.” Quit Like a Woman is a sobriety book that delves into the toxic culture of alcohol in society—and specifically, its impact on women.

She brilliantly weaves psychological, neurological, cultural, social and industry factors with her own journey. Without scare tactics, pain, or rules, she offers a strategy to give you freedom from alcohol. By addressing best alcoholic memoirs causes rather than symptoms, it is framed as a permanent solution rather than lifetime struggle. It removes the psychological dependence; allowing you to easily drink less (or stop drinking entirely).

The best memoirs of drug and alcohol addiction

In this dark but incredibly comedic memoir, Smith tells all about her story and the road she finally took towards recovery from her perpetual numbing. 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. Jerry Stahl was a writer with significant and successful screenwriting credits—Dr. But despite that success, Stahl’s heroin habit began to consume him, derailing his career and destroying his health until one final, intense crisis inspired him to get clean. Hardcore punk kids can only handle so much spiritual shit before we need to act out some.

Dry is a heartbreaking memoir of Augusten Burrough’s story of addiction, beginning with an intervention organized by his coworkers and boss and his first bout of sobriety. In an era of opioid addiction, wellness obsession and internet oversharing, stories of substance abuse are back. King is a writer, lawyer and NPR contributor whose memoir chronicles her decades-long downward spiral into alcoholism, from her small New England hometown to seedy restaurants where she waitressed and cockroach-ridden lofts where she lived. Eventually saved by her family, King writes with equal parts sensitivity and humor about redemption and compassion for others. Well, of course I tried my best to steal from them whatever I could.

Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol by Holly Whitaker

Ditlevsen’s trilogy, by contrast, plunges us into the perspective of a succession of her former selves. When she’s a child, we’re presented with the world as a child might see it. When she’s hooked on Demetrol, we perceive events through the distorted viewpoint of an addict. This is the kind of myopic or unreliable narrator we encounter frequently in novels – conspicuously naïve or self-delusive, and unchaperoned by a consolingly wise authorial presence—but almost never in memoir. Told in the present tense (another rarity in autobiography), the result is a stunningly immersive and intimate story.