Addiction Memoirs

A shy, bookish college graduate from a solid middle-class home, Kate Holden was uncertain of her way in life. When she decided to try her first hit of heroin, she did not anticipate that the drug would take over. Desperation drove her first to offer her body on the streets and then in high-class brothels, where she discovered hidden strengths as well as parts of herself that frightened her. With the acceptance and unyielding love of a family that never abandoned her, Kate Holden ultimately defeated the drug and left her netherworld behind.

Heroes and Nashville star Hayden Panettiere reclaims her story in a remarkably candid memoir. Hayden Panettiere’s career in entertainment began before she was old enough to walk. From early commercials to film and television roles in hits like Remember the Titans, her career unfolded in the...

Social media phenomenon and mental health advocate Chris Olsen invites readers into his therapist’s office—and into the story he’s spent years trying to understand—in this raw, fearless, and darkly funny memoir. For much of his childhood, Chris Olsen believed his family was ordinary...

At seven, Brandon was a skateboard prodigy. By the time he was fourteen, he was living the dream. Discovered by skate legends Bucky Lasek and Tony Hawk. Touring the US with the elite Powell-Peralta team. Signing autographs and appearing in films and magazines. Brandon had it all. Then he got hooked on heroin. Soon he was living a down-and-out life in a garage, begging for change, and hustling to score his next fix. He stole from his family and friends. He pushed the fantasy that everything was okay, that he was going to rehab, getting help, and getting better. But it was all a lie.

When the drug habit Nikki thought she'd kicked ends her brief stint at the University of Hawaii, she starts flipping her stash to make ends meet. Before she knows it, she's an up-and-coming player in Waikiki's drug trade, the new "it girl" on the scene who can always get you what you need to keep the party going. But every party winds down eventually, and Nikki soon finds herself face to face with the consequences, her life threatened by her "colleagues," and her freedom threatened by law enforcement. With nowhere left to run, her past finally catches up with her.

In the tradition of Blackout and Permanent Midnight, a darkly funny and revealing debut memoir of one woman's twenty-year battle with sex, drugs, and alcohol addiction, and what happens when she finally emerges on the other side. Growing up in Beverly Hills, Amy Dresner had it all: a top-notch...

In addiction, a person with a substance use disorder undergoes a negative change in thinking and behavioral patterns. A person's character is overthrown by addictive thinking: displacement, projection, shame, and hypersensitivity are addiction's survival mechanisms. With Addictive Thinking, both addicts and loved ones familiarize themselves with these addictive signatures and more, and begin the fight for recovery.

It started innocently enough. Beautiful Harper gave Sean those eyes...those eyes that meant, yes, take me. But Harper didn’t know Sean’s secrets.... She didn’t know that he liked it rough. More than rough. He liked to dominate. To punish. To degrade. It was the only way that the black hole in his soul wouldn’t swallow him up.

Pour la première fois, Matthieu Delormeau revient avec sincérité sur les trois dernières années de sa vie. L'addiction à la cocaïne, au GHB, aux médicaments. Les mécanismes insidieux. Les rechutes. La perte de repère. Le silence. Derrière l'image publique, il raconte la fragilité, les choix, les failles et la lente reconstruction. Sans chercher d'excuse. Sans se dérober. Jamais. Ce livre n'est pas un règlement de compte. C'est une mise à nu. Un témoignage cru et lucide sur l'engrenage de l'addiction et sur ce qu'il faut de volonté pour reprendre sa vie en main.

They called him Mr. Malfunction because something was always breaking, or about to. A bike. A deal. A rule he swore he lived by. Michael D. Fogt grew up with violence framed as normal, and he learned early that fear works. He carried that lesson into the Ohio backroads, the outlaw biker world, and a life built around speed, guns, drugs, and control. For years he tells it like he was untouchable, running hard, surviving shootouts, stacking cash, and treating consequences like a problem for someone else.

Most addiction memoirs end with sobriety. This one begins there. After years of relapses, Gail Brenner Nastasia was finally clean and ready for the promises of sobriety. Within a few years, everything she thought she ever wanted was hers: a husband, healthy children, and a prestigious legal career. Until she blew it all up. She ended her marriage by becoming involved with an active addict, her finances were in ruins, and she was living in constant chaos. In Staying Clean...

My name is Brett. I'm a college-educated man who was once a husband of 26 years with two children, three businesses, and a large home with an actual white picket fence. I'm also a drug addict. And I have a tale to tell. It's about the despair of addiction and the absolute certainty that it can be overcome. Recovery is not simply abstinence, but a process of growing up. I spent my entire life searching for the key to long-term sobriety. I would like to share with you what I have learned.

Brandon Novak, an actor known for the films Jackass and Viva La Bam, among others, was a teenage skateboarder, but his lust for heroin led to a junkie’s destiny on the streets of Baltimore. Arrests, rehabs, and drug-tortured love triangles consumed Novak’s life, until his childhood friend and Jackass alumnus Bam Margera guided him to MTV fame. But Novak’s stardom led him down a self-destructive path that forced him to sculpt his future.

'The most honest account of addiction I have read. This is an invaluable book'. – Tony Adams. What is an addict? Who is susceptible, and why? How can I recover from addiction? Growing up in a fractious and dysfunctional family, life wasn’t easy for the Secret Drug Addict. By the time he was...

Dancing with the Devil is a raw and unfiltered memoir that pulls back the curtain on addiction, pain, and the fight for redemption. Through deeply personal storytelling, Joseph Bradberry takes listeners into the chaos of a life consumed by meth, cocaine, and pills—where every high came with a cost, and every choice led further into darkness. This isn’t just a story about addiction—it’s about survival.

In the vein of Mary Karr’s Lit, Augusten Burroughs’ Dry and Sarah Hepola’s Blackout, As Needed for Pain is a raw and riveting—and often wryly funny—addiction memoir from one of New York media’s most accomplished editors which explores his never-before-told story of opioid addiction...

What could possibly be “lucky” about addiction? Absolutely nothing, thought Laura McKowen when drinking brought her to her knees. As she puts it, she “kicked and screamed . . . wishing for something - anything - else” to be her issue. The people who got to drink normally, she thought, were so damn lucky. But in the midst of early sobriety, when no longer able to anesthetize her pain and anxiety, she realized that she was actually the lucky one. Lucky to feel her feelings, live honestly, really be with her daughter, change her legacy.

Brooklyn is a mythic place and the Gowanus Canal, pestilent and fertile, is its Nile. “Yous stay outta that f*cking water,” Uncle Honey used to warn us. We never listened. Mid-century Gowanus: Decades before the Whole Foods went up and the lofts were refurbished, a raucous, unruly, proudly...

This deeply personal memoir, cowritten by singer-songwriter, renowned mental health advocate, and recent Order of Canada recipient Séan McCann and wife Andrea Aragon, leaves no stone unturned. Detailing in powerful and lyrical prose a Newfoundland childhood indoctrinated in strict Catholic faith, the creation of the wildly successful Great Big Sea, and the battle with alcoholism that nearly cost them everything, McCann and Aragon offer listeners a story of reaching international fame and finding rock bottom.

Understanding addiction is no longer just about understanding neurons or genes, broken brain functioning, learning, or faulty choices. Oliver J. Morgan provides a fresh take on addiction and recovery by presenting a more inclusive framework than traditional understanding. Cutting-edge work in attachment, interpersonal neurobiology, and trauma is integrated with ecological-systems thinking to provide a consilient and comprehensive picture of addiction.