Recovery Memoirs

Sentenced to 65 years in a Texas prison, Damon West once had it all. He came from a great family, in a home full of God, love, support, and opportunities to reach any goal. A natural born leader, an athlete with good looks and charm, he appeared to be the all-American kid pursuing his dreams. Underneath this facade, however, was an addict in the early stages of disease. After suffering childhood sexual abuse by a babysitter at the age of nine, Damon began putting chemicals into his body to alter the way he felt.

All Porter Fischer wanted was the $4,000 Tony Bosch owed him. But Bosch would not pay him back, so he swiped Bosch’s Biogenesis ledgers as collateral. Fischer eventually examined the lists of clients and treatment plans revealed in the ledgers and saw what he really had: proof that major and minor sports figures came to the Miami antiaging clinic for anabolic steroids, human growth hormones, and other illegal drugs. That included one of the greatest sluggers in modern baseball history: three-time MVP Alex Rodriguez.

Andrew Brobyn's relationship was in shambles before he took the terrible acid that sent him on an almost decade-long journey seeking redemption. His immediate plans following university were to liquidate his illicit assets, sell his client list, pack up shop, and retire to his parents' home in Toronto, while he figured out what to do with a bachelor's degree in philosophy and a quarter million in cash. As his drug use and bipolar disorder spiral, his situation gets stranger and stranger, taking him from his university campus to strip clubs, psych wards, and the slammer.

Diagnosed with bipolar disorder in her forties, though having lived with its effects since childhood, Hope Andersen struggled for years to find inner peace. Her journey led her to alcoholism, pills, sexual promiscuity, turbulent and abusive relationships, and the brink of suicide. But it was her husband's brush with death as they entered their sixties that opened Hope's eyes, allowing her to begin her life anew. With a fresh lease, she remodeled her life and began seeking its deeper wisdom. Ultimately, what she found was hope.

Making It is a memoir about beating the odds and turning things around even when it all seems hopeless, by Jay Blades, known from the hit BBC One show The Repair Shop. We had our hardships, and there were times that we didn’t have a lot of food and didn’t have a lot of money. But that...

A Life of Recovery: Breaking the Chains of Addiction is a powerful and deeply personal memoir by Woody Giessmann, musician-turned-addiction specialist, who takes you on a raw, emotional journey from chaos and substance abuse to healing and hope. This inspirational story blends compelling autobiography with practical tools for families affected by addiction and untreated mental illness. From losing his brother to addiction and suicide, to his own spiral through alcohol and drugs while performing with a major rock band, Woody's story is brutally honest and painfully relatable.

When my eyes creaked open and tried to find focus, I didn’t know where I was. The room was dim, my wrists were tied to the bed rail, and the dull ache of a needle in my hand throbbed through the fog. Motionless and silent, I lay staring at the ceiling until everything started coming back to me—the hallucinations, my teeth were melting, the menacing trolls teetering around the bedroom; uncontrollable shaking while my wife, Robin, helped me take a shower; and the catatonic ride to the emergency department of Meriter Hospital.

As a young Latina and Native American lawyer and former wife of California’s attorney general and treasurer, Nadia Davis has long been subjected to public scrutiny. In this powerful homage to finding one’s worth in the face of mental health struggles, addiction, and public shaming, Davis shares her remarkable story. She reveals the depths of the darkness she went through, while gracefully offering transformational healing and an end to the choking grasp of shame.

In 2023, Cinelle Barnes is writing a travelogue about journeying home to the Philippines after a twenty-year separation when she suffers a traumatic brain injury. Cinelle’s story of her adoption and immigration to America as a child is not an easy one to tell to begin with. Suddenly, it seems impossible. Her memories and her connection to her husband and daughter in the Carolinas, to her own sense of self, and to her past are all erased in the blink of an eye. Cinelle has to not only piece together who she used to be but struggle to learn who she is here and now.

David Giffen was once a defrocked priest. Having spent a decade as an Anglican cleric in Southwestern Ontario, David served in leadership in three urban social-justice focused appointments as a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada. David was deprived of ministry and terminated from his appointment as incumbent priest of his parish on December 12th, 2018. He was in his fourth month on medical leave. David was formally accused, investigated and found guilty of sexual misconduct, all while he was drugged out, melting down on social media.

There wasn't one major reason that Kate Gunn decided to give up alcohol, more a few minor ones. She had an inkling that alcohol was holding her back from getting on top of her life. Plus the hangovers were getting worse. No longer just a dull headache throughout the day. At the worst times, entire weekends wiped out by one fun night she could hardly remember.

Four psychiatric wards. Three rehabs. Two jail cells. And a suicide attempt. Hannah was told she would not make it to 25 with the way she was living. She had struggled with mental illness her entire life, but at 22,her demons came to a head at the grips of severe substance abuse, life-changing trauma, and two major deaths in her life. Hannah’s struggles land her places no one ever hopes to grace; jail and psych wards lead her to the brink of death. Running out of options, she’s left with two choices: live or die.

Sober Stick Figure is a memoir from stand-up comedian Amber Tozer, chronicling her life as an alcoholic - starting with her first drink at the age of seven - and her eventual recovery. Amber writes about the crazy and harsh truths of being raised by alcoholics, becoming one herself, stagnating in denial for years, and finally getting sober.

This "utterly spectacular" book weighs the impact modern medical technology has had on the author's life against the social and environmental costs inevitably incurred by the mining that makes such innovation possible (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises). What if a lifesaving...

Cradled in the Arms of Compassion is at once a narrative of psychological transformation and a spiritual autobiography that details the survivor’s journey. Rogers shows how he found recovery through a combination of reflective retreats, therapy, creative expression, and an extraordinary application of imaginative meditation that spiritual seekers and practitioners will find utterly fascinating.

This memoir chronicles the escapades of aspiring actor and writer Charlie Gray, his downward spiral into a vodka bottle, and his profound realizations about life, family, friends, booze, trauma, and relapse as a now-recovering alcoholic.

As chronicled in his hit memoir Straight Pepper Diet, one fateful summer night, Joseph Naus, a young LA lawyer, went out to have just a couple of drinks. He awoke the next morning handcuffed to a hospital bed and charged with attempted murder. And then it got worse. The Palsgraf Revelation begins where Straight Pepper Diet left off. Joseph survived the initial blast of the nuclear bomb he dropped on his own life, but if he wants to become more than a shocking cautionary tale, he must now learn to live with the devastating fallout.

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.

At the age of 15, Kelle Groom found that alcohol allowed her to connect with people and explore intimacy in ways she'd never been able to experience before. She began drinking before class, often blacked out at bars, and fell into destructive relationships. At 19, already an out-of-control alcoholic, she was pregnant. Accepting the heartbreaking fact that she was incapable of taking care of her son herself, she gave him up for adoption to her aunt and uncle. When he was nine months old, the boy was diagnosed with leukemia....

Surviving the unsurvivable. Healing from the unhealable. This is an inspiring memoir of physical and mental recovery, from someone who lived through the Whakaari White Island volcanic eruption. ""I heard someone say, 'Wow!' And someone else exclaimed, 'Look at that!' I had my back to the crater...