Addiction Memoirs

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Khalil Rafati went to Los Angeles in the 1990s and had it all. He was working with Hollywood movie stars and legendary rock musicians, but it wasn't long before he found his way into the dark underbelly of the City of Angels. When he hit rock bottom-addicted to heroin and cocaine, overtaken by paranoia and psychosis, written off by his friends and family - he grabbed a shovel and kept digging. So how does someone with nothing, who feels like they deserve nothing, and who just wants to end it all turn their life around?

When Peter Canning started work as a paramedic on the streets of Hartford, Connecticut, 25 years ago, he believed drug users were victims only of their own character flaws. Although he took care of them, he did not care for them. But as the overdoses escalated, Canning began asking his patients how they had gotten started on their perilous journeys. And while no two tales were the same, their heartrending similarities changed Canning's view and moved him to educate himself about the science of addiction.

As a registered nurse, Gail Stewart Frare knew too well all the terrible medical possibilities that could devastate a person, and couldn’t help but fret over her two sons, Jeff and Christopher. By the time Christopher entered his teen years as healthy as his older brother, her worries subsided. Then the unspeakable happened. While on a spring break trip to visit Jeff, fifteen-year-old Christopher nearly died from a virus-induced heart failure—becoming one of the only six in one hundred thousand people who suffer from post viral cardiomyopathy. Shortly thereafter, he had to undergo heart...

Craig is 16 when he returns from a drug-fueled visit with his dad in Miami to find his mom leaving town with her 23 year-old boyfriend. In the same moment, his dreams of settling down with his pregnant girlfriend are dashed when she is moved off to Texas by her parents. Left alone in small town Oklahoma, he embarks on a deranged, cross-country quest for a family of his own. STILL LIFE WITH BRASS POLE is Craig Machen’s funny, debauched and heartfelt memoir about young love and coming of age in the titillation business. And how a roaring White Knight Complex, an eccentric comedy club owner,...

Nora Ephron returns with her first book since the astounding success of I Feel Bad About My Neck, taking a cold, hard, hilarious look at the past, the present, and the future, bemoaning the vicissitudes of modern life, and recalling with her signature clarity and wisdom everything she hasn’t (yet) forgotten. Filled with insights and observations that instantly ring true - and could have come only from Nora Ephron - I Remember Nothing is a pure delight.

*NEW! First place award winner for LGBTQ memoir and second place for autobiography in the FIREBIRD Book Award Contest!* Told with an unflinchingly honest voice as real as the flawed people that populated her world, The Making of a Woman is an award-winning memoir exploring the path less traveled. Childhood abuse and trauma powered an alcoholism that would nearly defeat Jewels. Yet Jewels' assures us that even when we lose those things that give shape to our soul, such as belonging, the need for touch, and safety in our own home, we can go on to devise a new way of being that surpasses our ...

In 1929, in the blue-collar city of Portsmouth, Ohio, a company built a swimming pool the size of a football field; named Dreamland, it became the vital centre of the community. Now, addiction has devastated Portsmouth, as it has hundreds of small rural towns and suburbs across America—addiction like no other the country has ever faced. How that happened is the riveting story of Dreamland.

The beloved star of Friends takes us behind the scenes of the hit sitcom and his struggles with addiction in this candid, funny, and revelatory memoir that delivers a powerful message of hope and persistence. In an extraordinary story that only he could tell, Matthew Perry takes listeners onto the soundstage of the most successful sitcom of all time while opening up about his private struggles with addiction. Candid, self-aware, and told with his trademark humor, Perry vividly details his lifelong battle with the disease and what fueled it despite seemingly having it all.

Mike Majlak was a 17-year-old from a loving middle-class family in Milford, Connecticut, when he got caught up in the opioid epidemic that swept the nation. For close to a decade thereafter, his life was a wasteland of darkness and despair. While his peers were graduating from college, buying homes, getting married, having kids, and leading normal lives, Mike was snorting Oxycontin, climbing out of cars at gunpoint, and burying his childhood friends.

Marcia, a young woman nearing twenty, is on her way to jail. She has been busted, again, this time for using heroin. As she passes buildings and bus stops that remind her of her childhood, she tries to recall what incidents led her to her dilemma. With barely a goodbye, her mother leaves her at the steps of the jail. Terrified, she is processed and placed in a new world—cell 6, bed 8. Unexpected Angels is a true account of a young woman, once an academic superstar, who is thrown into jail to await trial on a narcotics charge. At nineteen, she's already a three time loser. She must dig ...

Pennies from Heaven for Kevin is a remarkable story of a man whose life spiraled out of control after the death of his two-year-old son, Kyle. Blaming himself and ridden with pain and guilt, Kevin went on a downward path spending a total of seven years locked up in nineteen different jails and prisons, along with numerous rehabilitation centers over twenty years for alcohol and drug addiction. At one treatment facility, Kevin found a penny on his nightstand. The year of the penny was the year Kyle was born. Money was not allowed at the facility and, in that moment, the spirit of Kyle filled...

Author and advocate Mary DeMuth urges the church she loves to rise up and face the evil of sexual abuse and harassment with candor and empathy. Based on research and survivors' stories, along with fierce fidelity to Scripture, DeMuth unpacks the church's response to sexual violence and provides a healthy framework for the church to become a haven of healing instead of an institution of judgment.

From Honor Roll to Heroin: One Teen’s Descent and Determined Comeback Jude Hassan had everything a kid could ask for—loving parents, a safe home, and a future full of promise. At fourteen, his family moved from the city to a quiet, affluent suburb outside St. Louis. Suddenly the new kid, Jude struggled to fit in—but he kept his grades up, stayed busy with sports, and did everything right. Until one night changed everything. What started with curiosity and a hit of marijuana at a party spiraled into a fast-moving descent through prescription pills, deceit, addiction—and ultimately, ...

Retired wreckhead Catherine Gray, author of surprise best seller The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, is now in her ninth sober year and has learnt a damn sight more. This hotly anticipated sequel enlists the help of experts and case studies, turning a curious, playful gaze onto provocative questions. Is alcohol a parenting aid? Why are booze and cocaine such a horse and carriage? Once an addict, always an addict? How do you feel safe—from alcohol, others and yourself—in sobriety?

"Violet Lemon" is a heart-wrenching, life-affirming journey through five decades of pain, survival, and ultimately—peace. It begins in December 1970, when young Violet and her brother are torn from their home and the loving father they once knew. Thrust into a world of instability, abuse, and betrayal, Violet’s childhood becomes a battlefield. Raised by a toxic mother and an abusive stepfather, she grows up surrounded by domestic violence, mental illness, addiction, and poverty. Told in powerful vignettes, this raw and poetic novel follows Violet over 50 years as she grapples with PTSD,...

Sex, drugs and violence are all in a night’s work. Kelly-Anne is a young and vulnerable girl who is pulled into a world of drugs and cruelty by perverse and devious people. Trapped in a prison of fear that is created by those who use her, Kelly-Anne finds herself pulled into a shocking world from which she cannot escape. Her life suddenly becomes filled with rape, victimization, violence, drugs and prostitution. As her life spiral further out of control, she becomes pregnant to her abusive and sadistic boyfriend. Kelly-Anne must flee with her unborn child or be drawn back into the dark ...

Life and How to Live It: Volume One: Begin the Begin by Chaz Holesworth is a powerful and raw memoir that chronicles a journey of resilience, hope, and triumph against all odds. Raised amidst the harsh realities of Philadelphia’s slums, Chaz’s childhood was shaped by the stark contrast between a heroin-addicted father and a born-again Christian mother. Surrounded by gangs, poverty, and chaos, Chaz faced unthinkable challenges at a young age. This first volume delves into his upbringing, capturing moments of heartache, survival, and an unyielding desire to rise above his circumstances. ...

In her 2016 best-seller, A Heart Without A Home, Nichole Carpenter told of her experience living on the streets while her parents battled homelessness and heroin addiction. In this sequel, Nichole and her mother, Madge, continue their story... At the age of 9, Nichole was ripped from her mother's arms as they were each taken away in separate police cars. Nichole to the state children's home and her parents to the city jail. Over the next 3 years her mother would battle between her addiction and her love for her daughter. Only through the power of God's Spirit and the love of their family ...

Kate, born to abusive, drug addicted parents, identifies an inner God voice when she is very young. This voice, and the support of her grandmother, helps her overcome her circumstances instead of falling victim to them. However, as she grows up she finds that the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, and she discovers that she is an addict herself. Deciding not to go down the path her parents went, she rises above her circumstances again and chooses the path of recovery.