Perhaps one of the greatest myths surrounding addiction is the notion that you can overcome it with sheer determination alone. Christy Tending (she/they) is an activist, writer, and mama living in Oakland, California. Her work has been published in Newsweek, Catapult, HuffPost, and Ms. Magazine, among many others. You can learn more about her work at  or follow her on Twitter @christytending. Enjoy strange, diverting work from The Commuter on Mondays, absorbing fiction from Recommended Reading on Wednesdays, and a roundup of our best work of the week on Fridays.

• Trauma can range through a vast range of scenarios, and it’s all in the perception of how the person sees it and how they were affected.
• This memoir tells of her painful descent from depression into drug addiction and, eventually, how she broke free.
• The story follows Carr’s unbelievable arc through addiction, recovery, cancer, and life as a single parent to come to an understanding of what those dark years meant.

In our decades of experience, it is without question that the worst cases we have ever had are due to alcohol. Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend are about taking control of your life, knowing when to say yes, and learning how to say no. An addict can penetrate the mental state of any family member and profoundly affect their ability to make effective decisions. Addiction is often viewed differently and affects parents differently. One of the biggest challenges we face as addiction intervention professionals is the family. One of the problems we see with addiction is that some of the suggested solutions by way of consequences and accountability are different than almost every other disease.

God and Starbucks: An NBA Superstar’s Journey Through Addiction and Recovery by Vin Baker

But Ditlevsen’s single conventional moment also, I think, underlines her originality. The result was a tale whose bracing darkness is ultimately redeemed not by its perfunctorily hopeful ending but by the extraordinary force and beauty of its telling. If you experience addiction yourself, reading about other peoples’ experiences can help you feel less alone, remind you addiction isn’t your fault, and give you hope for the future. They could even offer some insight into recovery approaches you haven’t yet tried. Along with support from a healthcare professional, coping tools like apps, podcasts, and books may offer some benefits. Clare Pooley’s “Sober Diaries” details one woman’s realization that her alcohol habit was putting her life and her children at risk.

Black reaches children with exercises that allow them to express their feelings. Children are greatly affected, and Dr. Black understands the impact of them holding their true feelings inside and not talking about their feelings. If you know a child that could benefit from this book, we highly recommend that you have them go through it.

Resources to Help Explore Your Relationship with Alcohol

Substance users and their families will always have an intervention by society, and they have no control over the timing of this. Whether it is health, marital, or legal concerns, an intervention will always occur. Families continue to control the situation instead of facing the fear of the change that will come if they stop. Dr. Mate does not appear to believe in the disease concept, and Pleasure Unwoven sets out to test whether or not it is. We won’t spoil the movie, and regardless of whether or not it is a disease, there are effective solutions to treating addiction. As you read through all the other counseling strategies that came after, you will find equal similarities.

Alongside personal experience, Edward has deep connections to the mental health treatment industry, having worked as a medical office manager for a psychiatric consortium for many years. The pain you feel from Emmy keeping mom’s alcoholism a secret is overwhelming. Any family reading this article and who reads this book will probably think twice about waiting another day to intervene in their loved one’s addiction when the addicted person has children who are being affected. If it’s your loved one who lives with addiction, books on the topic may help you better understand the challenges of living with this mental health condition.

Double Double: A Dual Memoir of Alcoholism

But the challenge is particularly acute when the story is about a life that, as the reader well knows, has simply gone on and on beyond the final page. Life doesn’t provide moments of satisfying narrative resolution. How do you craft an ending that makes narrative sense but which feels complex and inconclusive in the way life so often is? Many addiction memoirs evince a desire to repay the reader for all the dark places the story has taken them with a thumpingly joyous ending. For these reasons, in many addiction memoirs the end is the weakest part.

Her book has personal stories, reflections, quotes, self-tests, and exercises. Any addict can read the book of Alcoholics Anonymous and find overwhelming similarities, as could an Alcoholic find overwhelming similarities in the book of Narcotics Anonymous. The drug of choice is not the problem, the substance user is the problem, and the substance that is used is their self-destructive solution of choice. When you best alcohol recovery books put your child’s addiction first and enable them, you are making them worse along with yourself and everyone else around you. Addict in the Family by Beverly Conyers is a book to help comfort family members by assisting them in understanding that they did not cause the addiction, nor could they have done anything to prevent it. Whether or not we fully agree with that concept, it still proves to be a great read.

Why should I read it?

Beneath her perfect life and incredible success hides a girl who thought she had cheated her way out of her anxiety and stress via alcohol, only to find that she has surrendered to the powers of this magical liquid. She is the perfect example of a high-functioning alcoholic whose life looks perfect on the outside, even as it crumbles on the inside. In https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/alcohol-allergies-symptoms-and-signs/ this book, celebrated journalist Anne Dowsett Johnston intuitively intertwines her own life story of alcohol use disorder with some great in-depth research and relevant interviews. Her book includes the perspective of those leading the charge in this field, shedding some much-needed light on this crisis and the factors that have contributed to it.

The point is the foundational message, vision, and solution of Alcoholics Anonymous cannot be completely avoided regardless of which method works for someone to achieve sobriety. Regardless of how one finds their way out of addiction, the chances are excellent that some of the successfully applied strategies run parallel an idea, thought, action, and structure to suggestions of Alcoholics Anonymous. Our experts continually monitor the health and wellness space, and we update our articles when new information becomes available. Addiction counselors can also offer support when behaviors like gambling or shopping begin to have a similar effect on your life.