Finally, I sought out books that helped me to better understand the human condition, including my own. Michael Matthews has a knack for making complex subjects easy to understand. This book can help you avoid the layers of marketing BS that plague fitness magazines and start a fitness regimen that actually works. I picked up this book because I knew that Tony Robbins was a mega-successful self-help guru, which led me to believe that he had to be a con man of sorts. The first 100 pages blew my mind and I found myself getting excited to read another chapter of this book every night before going to sleep. With intensity and repetition, I’ve also turned certain yoga poses into automatic initiators of a rush of feel-good chemicals. At best, going to bed with a bottle of wine will make you wake up feeling dry-mouthed and stupid. Going to bed with a book will tire your eyes naturally, ease your subconscious tension, and fill your mind with endless possibilities. It explains how alcohol affects human beings on a chemical, physiological, and psychological level, from those first drinks right up to chronic alcoholism.... The founder of the first female-focused recovery program offers a groundbreaking look at alcohol and a radical new path to sobriety.... Annie Grace presents the psychological and neurological components of alcohol use based on the latest science and reveals the cultural, social, and industry factors that support alcohol dependence.... He is the owner of Sunshine Nutraceuticals LLC. Michael is the author of a blog focusing on living a happy, healthy, healing lifestyle. He is board-certified in pharmacotherapy as well as psychiatry.

Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family by Mitchell S. Jackson

Once we started, we realized there was still room for many more of our personal favorites. Consider this the first in an ongoing series as we help you throughout the ongoing pandemic. Chris Scott founded Fit Recovery in 2014 to help people from around the world dominate alcohol dependence and rebuild their lives from scratch. A former investment banker, he recovered from alcohol dependence using cutting-edge methods that integrate nutrition, physiology, and behavioral change. Today, Chris is an Alcohol Recovery Coach and the creator of an online course called Total Alcohol Recovery 2.0. Alcohol addiction is primarily a biochemical disorder, one reinforced by neural pathways linking alcohol to desired states of mind. She started sneaking sips from her parents’ wine glasses as a kid and went through adolescence drinking more and more. By the time she was an adult in a big city, all she did was drink. Blackout is her poignant story of alcoholism and those many missing hours that disappeared when she had just enough to drink to wipe out her memory. Hepola gets through the darkest parts of her story with self-deprecating humor and a keen eye on what she was burying by drinking. I recently came to terms with my own problematic relationship with alcohol, and my one solace has been in books. I’ve dug into memoir after memoir, tiptoed into the hard science books, and enjoyed the fiction from afar. The following are a smattering of the books about alcoholism I’ve found meaningful. If there is one book that has changed my life for the better, this is it. Although not a book written explicitly for addiction and recovery, the tools explained in this book can help anyone improve their general mood. In We Are the Luckiest, author Laura McKowen emphasizes appreciating the gift of sobriety instead of lamenting the loss of casual alcohol use.

Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself by Melody Beattie

The list I have created sidesteps books that glorify addiction. I have not listed books describing the lives of rock stars or movie stars. The goal is to create a helpful list for anyone who needs it. Some of the books on this list are instructional, and others are informational. As a mother, I relate to her story so deeply—our children were the same young age when we stopped drinking. She’s an iconic, witty literary voice, an engrossing storyteller, and this book too is a great study in memoir. Clare Pooley intertwines personal victories, research, and answers to FAQs about quitting alcohol in her memoir, The Sober Diaries. The book provides practical skills to change the self-sabotaging way a person thinks using four actionable steps. The acclaimed author of Prozac Nation goes from depression to addiction with this equally devastating personal account. Wurtzel reveals how drugs fueled her post-breakout period, describing with unbearable specificity how her doctor's prescription of Ritalin, intended to help her function, only brought her down. A tale of survival more than recovery, Díaz’s memoir is about unlearning the powerful ideas we are raised with – in this case, that violence and chaos are normal. Díaz writes of her childhood in a public housing project in Puerto Rico and, later, Miami Beach, and an adolescence marked by “juvenile delinquency” and marred by violence, addiction, mental illness, and abuse. Díaz’s resilience – and success – in the face of mighty obstacles registers as part luck, part strength, and part audacity. When we aren't posting here, we build programs to help people quit drinking. When we aren’t posting here, we build programs to help people with common reasons for intimacy problems in a relationship. This is a raw memoir that makes you feel like you’re there with the writer, through all her shame, all her hiding, and all her self-accusations of being a terrible mother because of her drinking.

We Are The Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life by Laura McKowen

A lot of people in the entertainment industry succumb to drugs due to the high-pressure nature of their careers. When the Red Hot Chili Peppers burst into the music scene, they quickly became one of the most successful bands in the world. Nic was a star athlete, an honor student, a brother who doted on his siblings, and an all-around sociable person. And after getting addicted to meth, he was an unstable menace who lied, stole, and roamed the streets. Every morning was spent wondering about what happened the previous night and apologizing for actions she can’t remember. What follows next is a journey to rediscover the person she has drowned in alcohol. Lucado masterfully examines the cross of Christ and wonderfully draws out just how significant the crucifixion is. This book will leave the reader in tears overwhelmed by the grace of God showing the reader just how much God loves them. You can perhaps get a clearer indication of some of the thought processes typically shared by heavy drinkers.

• Despite this, our understanding of addiction remains outdated.
• The book also discusses Kiedis’ relapses and reveals what inspired him to get sober.
• In this powerful book, founder of Tempest and The Temper, Holly Whitaker embarks on a personal journey into her own sobriety and along the way discovers the insidious role that alcohol plays in our society.
• Allen Carr’s bestseller is a powerful tool for reframing the internal assumptions many people hold about alcohol.
• At the end of the day, you’ll want to devour this book because it is ultimately a life-affirming story of resilience that is a must-read.

Julia Ross is a pioneer of nutrient therapy, and this book explains how basic nutrients can be used with great success to cure a number of mental health issues. Books such as this one do not deny the utility of prescription medications for patients who need them. The premise is simply that using nutrients that our bodies have evolved to use is a safer first approach for treating mood disorders. Narrower in its scope than the previous book, The Vitamin Cure conveys a simple approach to using basic nutrients to fight alcohol withdrawal and cravings. Unlike 7 Weeks to Sobriety, this book answers some questions about why the addiction treatment industry tends to ignore nutrition. A memoir of unblinking honesty and poignant, laugh-out-loud humor,Blackoutis the story of a woman stumbling into a new kind of adventure — the sober life she never wanted. They call into question the beliefs we’ve been raised with, and stereotypes of addiction. Each of these authors demands that we face addiction as an intimate, human story as well as a broad public health and safety issue. For those asking why we’re seeing so much more compassion for the opioid epidemic than we did during the crack epidemic, Dr. Hart is your man. A neuroscientist who made it out of a bad Miami neighborhood ponders in this memoir why he didn’t end up headed down a different path. Her struggle is beautifully portrayed, and you also get to emerge with her on the other side once she regains her sobriety once more. There’s a new kind of thinking in the recovery world, and all of that is thanks to McKowen’s upcoming memoir . Often, we hear the stories of people with addiction being redeemed by their children — but this is not that kind of story, which is precisely why we love it. It’s about a woman who longs to belong and find comfort in her new life with husband and baby but instead develops a gripping addiction to wine. Takes a deep dive into the history of the recovery movement while also examining how race and class impact our understanding of who is a criminal and who is simply ill. She ultimately identifies how we all crave love and how that loneliness can shape who we are, addicted and not. 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. Dresner battles through addiction and starting over in her 40s after she went as low as she could imagine.