Addiction Memoirs

Eric Clapton is far more than a rock star. Like Dylan and McCartney, he is an icon and a living legend. He has sold tens of millions of records, played sell-out concerts all over the world, and been central to the significant musical developments of his era. His guitar playing has seen him hailed as "God". Now, for the first time, Eric tells the story of his personal and professional journeys in this pungent, witty, and painfully honest autobiography.

At the age of 30, Amy Liptrot finds herself washed up back home on Orkney. Standing unstable on the island, she tries to come to terms with the addiction that has swallowed the last decade of her life. As she spends her mornings swimming in the bracingly cold sea, her days tracking Orkney's wildlife, and her nights searching the sky for the Merry Dancers, Amy discovers how the wild can restore life and renew hope.

At the start of this remarkable story of recovery, healing, and redemption, Ginger Gaffney answers a call to help retrain the troubled horses at an alternative prison ranch in New Mexico, a facility run entirely by the prisoners. The horses are scavenging through the dumpsters, kicking and running down the residents when they bring the trash out after meals. One horse is severely injured. The horses and residents arrive at the ranch broken in one way or many: the horses are defensive and terrified, while the residents, some battling addictions, are emotionally and physically shattered.

Weldon Long knows firsthand that Maui is nicer than prison. After 13 years of federal and state incarceration, he emerged a transformed man: a powerful speaker, driven motivator, and successful trainer/entrepreneur. Long holds a BS in law and an MBA in management, despite dropping out of high school in the ninth grade.

"The first chance I got, I bought my very first bag of crystal methamphetamine... A monster was born. Try as I might, there is simply no way for me to minimize the impact with which crystal meth slammed into my life, at least not without straying far from the truth. It was like throwing a forty-pound sledge hammer though a plate glass window. What a cunning thing this was that lived inside of me. How could I ever hope to win against it? My good intentions meant nothing what I lacked was power."

Jude Hassan was an ordinary, all-American kid. He had two amazing parents who gave him everything, especially a loving home. At fourteen, Jude's family moved from their home in the city to a beautiful suburban town on the outskirts of St. Louis. Suddenly, Jude was faced with being the new kid for the first time in his young life. He struggled to find his way in his new surroundings but continued to make straight A’s and excel in sports. When a fellow student approached him about attending a party, he was apprehensive but eager to experience his first social gathering. Unfortunately, that ...

The ultimate front-row seat to the rise, fall, and rebirth of a band that was - for a time - the biggest in the world, Hootie & the Blowfish, and Jim Sonefeld’s shattering and redeeming spiritual path from addiction to recovery and a more fruitful life.

When Kristi stopped drinking, she started noticing things. Like when you give up a debilitating habit, it leaves a space, one that can’t easily be filled by mocktails or ice cream or sex or crafting. And when you cancel Rosé Season for yourself, you’re left with just summer, and that’s when you notice that the women around you are tanked - that alcohol is the oil in the motors that keeps them purring when they could be making other kinds of noise. In her sharp, incisive debut essay collection, Coulter reveals a portrait of a life in transition.

This harrowing, deeply personal, coming of age, on the road memoir follows critically acclaimed 80s indie alt rock band Divine Weeks’ first tour in the summer of ’87. Liberated from alcoholic upbringings and rigid cultural constraints, all they have is their music and each other’s friendship. The road is filled with yuppies, brothels, riots, sleeping on floors, spiked drinks, DJs with no pants, and battles with racism. They set out on the road to discovery to drink in all they could and maybe sell a few records. They grew up instead.

A searing confessional infused with the darkest humor, Permanent Midnight chronicles the opiated abyss of a Hollywood screenwriter and his formidable climb into sobriety. Made into a major motion picture starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, Permanent Midnight is revered by critics and an ever-growing cult of devoted fans as one of the most compelling contemporary memoirs.

When he was two years old, Hunter Biden was badly injured in a car accident that killed his mother and baby sister. In 2015, he suffered the devastating loss of his beloved big brother, Beau, who died of brain cancer at the age of 46. These hardships were compounded by the collapse of his marriage and a years-long battle with drug and alcohol addiction.

Born in the Bronx, Guy Trebay was raised in an atmosphere of privilege on Long Island’s North Shore after his entrepreneurial father struck business gold with Hawaiian Surf, a wildly successful cologne company that capitalized on the optimism of the 1960s as marketed to “an adventurous new breed of men.’’ But behind the facade of material prosperity lay the emotional disarray of a household dominated by a charismatic, con artist father, a glamorous yet lost and careless mother, a family haunted by tragedy.

As a WWE wrestler with millions of fans, Shawn Michaels had adulation and all the attention he could ask for, but he found himself longing for something more. When he became a committed Christian at the height of his career, Shawn learned what it's like to be a man of faith in a secular arena. Wrestling for My Life documents Shawn's journey to finding a new way of life - one that's marked by faith, family, and forgiveness.

Over the past four decades, the landmark NBC hit television series I Dream of Jeannie has delighted generations of audiences and inspired untold numbers of teenage crushes on its beautiful blond star, Barbara Eden. Part pristine Hollywood princess and part classic bombshell, with innocence, strength, and comedic talent to spare, Barbara finally lets Jeannie out of her bottle to tell her whole story. Jeannie Out of the Bottle takes us behind the scenes of I Dream of Jeannie as well as Barbara’s dozens of other stage, movie, television, and live concert performances.

In Recovered, pastor and author Robby Gallaty tells the story of how God radically saved him from his addictions and called him into a life of discipleship. Robby grew up in a very religious Catholic family who attended church every Sunday and confession on Saturday if needed. Very rarely did he miss a Saturday night dinner and a movie with his parents and sister Lori. You can imagine how devastated they were when Robby stole $15,000 from them to fuel his drug addiction.

Born to an abusive mother and a drug-dealer father, Ginelle Testa is not exactly set up for success—and her early years are just as troubled as one might expect. By the end of her thirteenth year, she’s started experimenting with alcohol and drugs, has fallen prey to anorexia, and has been sexually assaulted. And that’s only the beginning of her spiral down into addiction and disordered eating.

Lynn grew up the carefree daughter of a Miami undercover narcotics agent—until her dad snuck out of the house in the dark of night without a glance back. She never knew what happened to her father until she was in high school, and he was in prison for drug smuggling. By then, Lynn had developed a dangerous drug and alcohol habit of her own. It was the perfect setup for her to latch onto the only connection to her dad that remained when he was paroled from prison—cocaine.

Winfred Rembert grew up in a family of Georgia field laborers and joined the civil rights movement as a teenager. He was arrested after fleeing a demonstration, later survived a near-lynching at the hands of law enforcement, and spent the next seven years on chain gangs. During that time he met the undaunted Patsy, who would become his wife. Years later, at the age of 51 and with Patsy’s encouragement, he started drawing and painting scenes from his youth using leather tooling skills he learned in prison.

As Melissa Bond raises her infant daughter and a special-needs one-year-old son, she suffers from unbearable insomnia, sleeping an hour or less each night. She loses her job as a journalist (a casualty of the 2008 recession), and her relationship with her husband grows distant. Her doctor casually prescribes benzodiazepines—a family of drugs that includes Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan—and increases her dosage regularly.

The last time David Magee saw his son alive, William told him to write their family’s story in the hopes of helping others. Days later, David found William dead from an accidental drug overdose. Now, in a memoir suggestive of Augusten Burroughs meets Glennon Doyle, award-winning columnist and author David Magee answers his son's wish with a compelling, heartbreaking, and impossible to pause book that speaks to every individual and family.