Recovery Memoirs

Alone. Forgotten. Ashamed. What do these words mean to you? What about junkie? Loser? To someone, these words become part of their everyday life. Does this mean they are no longer human? As the human race, do we completely understand the suffering others go through? And what do we do to help? Nothing.

After 24 years in healthcare, one fateful evening transformed Mandi from practitioner to patient. A motor vehicle accident left her with a significant traumatic brain injury that has taken her much longer than expected to recover from. Follow along as she shares her journey back from her worst day through the first year.

All I ever wanted was to be loved and accepted. That's all. Now I am strung out on heroin, more vulnerable than ever, and clinically depressed. My entire existence is controlled by heroin and the need to escape reality. My rationality is being dominated, paralyzed, and defeated by another entity.

The Romeo & Juliet Delusion provides inspiration to anyone whose life has been touched by addiction or domestic violence. Abbott relies on raw and uninhibited storytelling to convey the methods she used to explore healing and freedom from trauma. Abbott's hope is that by authentically sharing her story, she can help to change the lives of people in similar situations and inspire others to view addiction and domestic abuse with compassion and curiosity.

Monday, March 11, 2024, was remarkably uneventful—indeed, frankly dull—until around 5 p.m. that evening when Carl Davies collapsed in a heap. It was a day that would change his life forever. Stroke Me! Recounts the story of his recovery from a near-catastrophic brain haemorrhage. The author details, in often graphic detail, every step of his journey, from the stroke itself to the pain of physical and occupational therapy. He leaves no stone unturned as he describes the impact his illness has had on him and his family. Stroke Me!

Character Witness is a memoir about a son's relationship with his mother, chronicling her struggle with mental illness, addiction, and poverty while exploring how the son's troubles as a young man began to mirror hers.

A Journey Through Grief, Loss, Hope and Recovery will benefit those working through sorrow, and those comforting others. Choosing to thrive in the midst of trauma, loss, and illnesses that change lives forever for both young and old alike is the underlying message in this audiobook. It is never easy, but there is hope to thrive and not just survive the journey to recovery. In some way, pain, loss, and tragedy unmistakably touch all of our lives.

Stanice Anderson, motivational speaker and author of 12-Step Programs: A Resource Guide for Helping Professionals, delivers a personal guide to dealing with failure and turning to triumphs. By examining her own obstacles, Anderson relates to problems that many people face today.

This could be the story of any man, his life driven and guided for half a century by his overwhelming desire for alcohol. This book relates a candid and informative account of an alcoholic’s life and where it leads. It also offers suggestions of reasons for alcoholism, the effects that alcohol has upon the brain, an examination of the law relating to mental capacity, and an ultimately heartfelt plea to anyone instrumental in changing the lives for such unfortunate individuals, to examine more closely the research available.

Rich's life is spiraling out of control. Consumed by addiction to alcohol, opioid prescription drugs, and gambling, his attempts to drown out the darkness and reality of a troubled childhood will lead to unimaginable trials for his family. His wife, Sue, struggles to help him, but fears all hope is lost. In an instant, a horrific diagnosis after a sudden traumatic brain injury could end it all.

In this story of perseverance and the strength of the human spirit, Robert Woods recounts the painful years of his childhood, when he watched his parents recover from a challenging divorce while suffering his own horrendous abuse in secret. By opening up about his abuse and the many years of holding on to hatred and resentment that followed, Robert illustrates that no matter the circumstances, there is always hope.

Double Double is a unique and honest dual memoir of alcoholism, a disease that affects nearly 45 million Americans each year. Now, award-winning mystery writer Martha Grimes and her son, Ken Grimes, offer two points of view on their struggles with alcoholism. In alternating chapters, they share their stories - stories of drinking, recovery, relapse, friendship, travel, work, success, and failure.

In this deeply moving and resourceful memoir, beloved actor-director and New York Times best-selling author Joe Pantoliano takes aim at the stigma attached to what he calls “brain dis-ease” by writing candidly and humorously about his own journey through clinical depression and addiction.

This is never more important than when life takes a downturn in the form of a sick loved one. Love Heals is the true story of a doctor's journey from successful physician to patient facing illness after illness, until his life depended upon a heart transplant so risky, few hospitals would even dare to attempt it. At one point, the family faced the dilemma of choosing between an artificial heart or taking a risk of waiting for a donor heart when the patient was given 24 hours to live.

Being crowned homecoming queen fast-tracked me to an identity crisis that catalyzed my disclosure of ten years of sexual abuse at the hands of my stepfather. I dropped out of high school for the first half of my senior year while the disclosure was incinerated in my notorious stepfather's career-climbing kiln. I am recovering my authentic self from the rubble of losses amassed over years of enduring entirely narcissistic parents.

What is the thing most of us search for, sing about, cry about, that research has all wrong? The secret to the rarest, most passionate love that never ends.

Abandoned by his mother at birth, Kevin was enveloped in a labyrinth of adoption, addiction, and child sexual abuse. By age 20, a shell of the boy he once was, Kevin succumbed completely to a suicidal lifestyle of drug dealing and prostitution. At 45, after many years of recovery, Kevin began a painful journey to uncover his origins, and the hopeful search for his mother. Dear Stephen Michael’s Mother chronicles the unfolding of these two stories.

With his trademark rock 'n' roll hair and snakeskin spandex pants, plus a hot rod and a Harley, Lüc Carl fit the part as a bar manager based in New York City's gritty Lower East Side. And life was good for this Omaha, Nebraska, transplant-a talented drummer who originally moved to the big city to pursue his rock 'n' roll dreams-until, suddenly, it wasn't. Fast forward through seven years of working long hours, binging on late-night Chinese food, and drinking excessively; life had found Lüc 40 pounds overweight and completely out of shape.

In his late teens Tom Macher rebelled against a world that seemed stacked against him. Raised in a broken family and estranged from an absentee father suffering with AIDS, Macher turned to alcohol to escape the painful loneliness of his reality. In quick succession, he is kicked out of school, and then his mother's house, sent to a boys' home in Montana, and later, a halfway house in a truck-stop town of Louisiana. It was there that Macher encounters a community of young men struggling to survive.

In 16 brilliantly observed true stories, Sam Harris emerges as a natural humorist in league with David Sedaris, Chelsea Handler, Carrie Fisher, and Steve Martin, but with a voice uniquely his own. Praised by the Chicago Sun-Times for his "manic, witty commentary", and with a storytelling talent the New York Times calls " New Yorker - worthy," he puts a comedic spin on full-disclosure episodes from his own colorful life. What better place to find painfully funny material than in growing up gay, gifted, and ambitious in the heart of the Bible belt?