Addiction Memoirs

In this inspiring memoir, the award-winning playwright and best-selling author of What Looks like Crazy on an Ordinary Day reminisces on the art of juggling marriage, motherhood, and politics while working to become a successful writer. In addition to being one of the most popular living playwrights in America, Pearl Cleage is a best-selling author with an Oprah Book Club pick and multiple awards to her credit. But there was a time when such stellar success seemed like a dream.

Lauren’s life story is a raw and gripping journey through the darker side of human experience. With the false freedom of quick cash and the harsh reality of hitting rock bottom, Lauren's quest for independence and survival is both intense and inspiring. When adversity strikes, she reaches out for help but encounters predators at every turn, each encounter shaping her understanding of herself and the world. Reflecting on her troubled childhood in a small town, Lauren's narrative captures the delicate balance between innocence and exploitation, strength and vulnerability. Through vivid and ...

Anthony Bourdain didn’t just eat his way across the world—he narrated it, dissected it, and ultimately got devoured by it. Anthony Bourdain: A Guy Who Should Be Dead is an unflinching portrait of the man behind the myth: heroin addict, father, chef, celebrity, and loner. With a sardonic tone that echoes Hemingway and a scalpel-sharp narrative, this book strips away the glossy TV persona and reveals the fractured, compelling human beneath. From his suburban New Jersey childhood and the drug-fueled chaos of New York’s culinary underbelly, to the accidental explosion of Kitchen ...

With a rare mix of honesty, humor, and compassion, comedian and movie star Russell Brand mines his own wild story and shares the advice and wisdom he has gained through his 14 years of recovery. Brand speaks to those suffering along the full spectrum of addiction - from drugs, alcohol, caffeine, and sugar addictions to addictions to work, stress, bad relationships, digital media, and fame. Brand understands that addiction can take many shapes and sizes and how the process of staying clean, sane, and unhooked is a daily activity.

A Bricklayer’s Tales: A Collection of Short Stories and Memoirs by Gary Troia is a raw, darkly humorous exploration of working-class struggles, self-destruction, and creative frustration. Told through the eyes of Ray Dennis—Troia’s disillusioned alter ego—these gritty, unflinching stories dive into the realities of depression, alcoholism, drug use, and the suffocating monotony of low-paid labour. From bleak construction sites to psychedelic escapes, each tale captures the highs and lows of a man trapped between artistic ambition and brutal wage slavery. Whether facing deportation in...

"Loved it! Highly entertaining." (See below) Can YOU handle the TRUTH of this SHOCKING CULT CLASSIC? WARNING: THIS GROUND-BREAKING & ORIGINAL TRUE STORY MAY CHANGE YOUR LIFE... A dark, painful, vulgar, true to life story of simply being human. It's written with flair, honesty and without doubt love, and is the kind of book that could readily be misunderstood. The degree to which you reject the storyteller and his tale will tellingly reveal how you judge yourself. Paul Pisces writes with charm, wit and style about the parts of me I'd rather disown. By his owning those parts in him, I too am ...

When Jim Wahlberg went to prison the second time at 22 years old, he was sentenced to six to nine years for breaking and entering, bargained down from life for home invasion. He had staggered into a Boston cops apartment, helping himself to the sellable stuff and all the beer in the fridge. The cop came home, found Jim passed out at the kitchen table, beat the hell out of him, and arrested him.

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.

John Walker was a Miami undercover narcotics agent in the 1970s. Ten years later, he was in prison for smuggling 12,000 pounds of marijuana. In prison, he connected with a South American drug lord who was still running the family operation from inside the federal pen. Within months of being paroled, John began smuggling again—this time uncut Colombian cocaine. And this time, he put everything on the line: his freedom, his family and, ultimately, his life.

Blow is the unlikely story of George Jung's roller-coaster ride from middle-class high school football hero to the heart of Pablo Escobar's Medellín cartel - the largest importer of the United States cocaine supply in the 1980s. Jung's early business of flying marijuana into the United States from the mountains of Mexico took a dramatic turn when he met Carlos Lehder, a young Colombian car thief with connections to the then newly-born cocaine operation in his native land. Together they created a new model for selling cocaine.

"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."

Sharing never-before-heard stories ranging from their struggles with depression, eating disorders, and addiction, Karen and Georgia irreverently recount their biggest mistakes and deepest fears, reflecting on the formative life events that shaped them into two of the most followed voices in the nation. In Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered, Karen and Georgia focus on the importance of self-advocating and valuing personal safety over being "nice" or "helpful." They delve into their own pasts, true crime stories, and beyond to discuss meaningful issues with empathy and frankness.

Josh Hamilton was the first player chosen in the first round of the 1999 baseball draft. He was destined to be one of those rare "high-character" superstars. But in 2001, working his way from the minors to the majors, all of the plans for Josh went off the rails in a moment of weakness. What followed was a four-year nightmare of drugs and alcohol, estrangement from friends and family, and his eventual suspension from baseball.

The author's young adulthood basically amounts to a how-to primer for addiction. Paranoia and impulsiveness, obsession, and manipulation. Throw in compulsion, false pride, fear and dishonesty, all driven by self-centered thinking. The gateway behavior for all the others. Blessed with a good memory, almost granular for certain events and circumstances, Mike Matson turns his journalist's eye on his own past and the result is an honest, unflinching look at his decades-long struggle with addiction.

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.

Victoria Vanstone grew up in 1980s England in a happy home full of laughter, booze and a disturbing amount of fancy-dress parties. From her youthful days downing cheap wine at the local park to dodging disastrous relationships, her reliable mate alcohol was never far from reach. Eventually, Victoria found herself with a husband and a child on the way. After sobering up for her first pregnancy, becoming a boring, bottom-wiping, cleaning machine meant she soon returned to her binge-drinking ways, and had to grapple anew with the habits and beliefs that had gone unchecked since childhood.

The author of this diary began journaling on her 16th birthday. She lived in an upper middle class neighborhood in Santa Monica with her mom, dad, and Berkeley-bound older brother. She was a good girl, living a good life...but one party changed everything. One party, where she took one taste - and liked it. Really liked it.

For nearly four decades, David Sedaris has faithfully kept a diary in which he records his thoughts and observations on the odd and funny events he witnesses. Anyone who has attended a live Sedaris event knows that his diary readings are often among the most joyful parts of the evening. But never before have they been available in print. Now, in Theft by Finding, Sedaris brings us his favorite entries. From deeply poignant to laugh-out-loud funny, these selections reveal with new intimacy a man longtime fans only think they know.

Don't Let Your Kids Kill You is a landmark work that dares to focus on the plight of the confused, distressed parent and not the erring child. It sets aside any preconceived ideas that parents are to blame for what is essentially a full-blown global crisis. Drawing on interviews with parents who have survived the heartbreak of kids on drugs, combined with his own experience, Charles Rubin provides practical advice on how parents can help themselves and their families by first attending to their own needs.

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.