Drunks and addicts have always been attracted to stories about addiction and recovery, as have those who know and love them. Two-thirds of the legendary “Big Book” (Alcoholics Anonymous, the Story of How Many Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism) consists of stories about finding sobriety.
The book begins with AA co-founder Bill W.'s account of his coming to “believe in a Power greater than myself.” Indeed, according to a paper published in Psychiatric Times, “storytelling is a primary means of conveying” the “spiritual awakening” that is a key goal of twelve-step programs.
But even agnostic addicts who are not members of twelve-step programs —such as Thom — draw strength from the tales of those who have faced down their demons. The most powerful inspirations to his sobriety twenty-five years ago were Dennis Wholey's The Courage to Change (Houghton Mifflin, 1984), a collection of conversations with people in recovery, and Clark Vaughan's Addictive Drinking (Penguin, 1982), which was written by a drunk turned addictions counselor.
Addicted Children
Several books have been written by parents inspired by their children's substance abuse. They run the gamut from “cure” to tough-love "how to" to “narrative.”
In Come Back (Harper, 2006), Claire Fontaine and Mia Fontaine wrote a gripping mother-daughter memoir of, as the subtitle reads, their "journey through hell and back." Their occasional blog is here.
Martha Tod Dudman's Augusta Gone (Simon & Schuster, 2001) is a gripping narrative about a mother's struggle to understand her teenaged daughter's manipulation, theft, drug use and disappearance from home, as well as her own guilt and doubts.
Meredith Maran's Dirty: A Search for Answers Inside America's Teenage Drug Epidemic (HarperSanFranciso, 2003) follows three addicted teens through several ineffectual treatment programs in California. The book is an idiosyncratic mix of reporting, opinion, and policy recommendations inspired by Maran's experiences with her own 23-year-old son, who maintains his sobriety as the only white minister in a predominantly African-American Baptist church. Unfortunately, his story only consumes a few pages in the book.
Former Senator George McGovern wrote the book we're grateful we didn't: Terry: My Daughter's Line-and-Death Struggle with Alcoholism, (Plume 1997). Terry, 45, stumbled out of a bar in 1994 and froze to death in a snowbank, ending a lifetime struggle with substance abuse and depression that, typically, included stretches of sobriety.
Don't Let Your Kids Kill You: A Guide for Parents of Drug and Alcohol Addicted Children (Harper Collins, 1996) provides hard-nosed “how-to” advice based on the experiences of author Charles Rubin, an advertising executive, with his two sons' addictions.
Joan Mathews-Larsen, Ph.D., wrote Seven Weeks to Sobriety: The Proven Program To Fight Alcoholism Through Nutrition (Ballantine, 1997) because her seventeen-year-old son committed suicide after he completed an in-patient alcoholism treatment program. Mathews-Larsen, a nutritionist, has developed a program to treat the biochemical roots of alcoholism.
Just Love Her by Trina Hayes (Lifeguide House, 2007) is first-person look at the impact of addiction on families.
Advocacy
"For almost twenty years, my most important relationship was with alcohol," writes Jean Kilbourne writes in Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel. "So many years later, I wish I could reach out to that girl I once was and prevent her from making that catastropic choice." Mostly, this book is a very powerful look at what Daniel Boorstin called "the rhetoric of democracy."
General Addiction
Hundreds of memoirs dealing with addiction have been published over the years. Among those we've read and appreciated are:
Caroline Knapp's Drinking: A Love Story (Dial, 1997)
Augusten Burrough's Dry (St. Martin's Press, 2003)
Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes (Random House, 1968)
Pete Hamill's A Drinking Life (Little, Brown, 1994)