The best books about addiction

The brilliance of Hustle is the way it juxtaposes the everyday addict's life. Sure, there's the big crime and action, bad guys, car chases. Again, that part fiction. But Hustle lives and breathes in between. In the minutia. Of the doldrums of, as Lou Reed once so eloquently sang, waiting for the man. It's the quiet moments and small conversations between Big Rich and Donny, where we see their humanity. As warped and twisted as the world may be around them, they never lose that appeal: being victims of the human condition. And like I said, living this life with Tom (the drug part), I can honestly say it was those little conversations that give you something to laugh about and a little hope to hold onto. 

Benson and Simpson use the opportunity perspective – assuming that crimes often depend on offenders recognizing an opportunity to commit an offense – to uncover the processes and situational conditions that induce white-collar crimes. 

They offer solutions to this persistent and widespread social problem, recognizing the difficulties of control.

The treatment is thoroughly researched and empirically supported. 

What if addiction isn’t a chronic relapsing disease, as described by the National Institute on Drug Abuse? What if a better way to think about it is as a type of learning disorder? Neuroscientist and author Marc Lewis, himself a recovering addict, makes his compelling argument through the stories of five people suffering from substance use disorders. This insightful book left me believing that the attempt to fit addiction into rigid categories does a disservice to the complexity of this condition.

This novel stayed with me for literally years.

I love a well-told, emotionally complex, family drama set in the burbs (aʹ la John Cheever, Amy Bloom, A.M. Homes, you get the drift).

Setting and gorgeous writing aside, Lily King crawls inside the heart and head of protagonist Daley Amory, a twenty-something who is trying to escape the tyranny of her father’s alcoholism and reinvent a new life for herself.

I rooted hard for her to make this break, to ride off into the sunset, or to enroll at Berkely to study anthropology, and make a life with a great guy.

I won’t give away the ending, but suffice it to say that King writes brilliantly about addiction, family, and the fierce and often futile siren’s call to repair what is broken.  

Another underrated and underread book, this memoir traces one woman’s descent into heroin hell and, ultimately, her recovery and redemption. I’ve known many heroin addicts in my day, and I hate to say it, especially publicly, but very few have been able to turn their lives around. Mitchell is one of the exceptions, and she sets a wonderful example for others to follow and not lose hope. Many memoirists simply make a record of their lives, or, worse, glorify their drug addiction, but not Hanson. Her book is one of insight and soul-searching into the madness of addiction. She pulls no punches about the ugliness of the addict’s life, yet at the same time, she offers hope to the most seemingly hopeless among us. At the heart of this book is a powerful message of recovery by someone, who by all accounts, should be dead.

I picked up Narcisa in Portland’s legendary Powell’s bookstore over ten years ago on a whim and it ended up worming its way into my top ten books of all time. The prose is chaotic, evocative, drippy, disgusting, engaging, fantastic. Narcisa is a predatory, magnetic mess of nature and like the narrator, you’ve got to keep flying with her until she throws you down. I was floored and inspired by Shaw’s ability to tame such a blizzard of turmoil between two thin paper covers.

In the 70’s, two journalists from a prominent Berlin newspaper went to Zoo Station, a section of the city where hookers and junkies hung out where they met Christiane F. Over months they documented her story and helped her get it into book form. It’s a typical tale, abusive and/or indifferent parents, marijuana at 12, heroin addict and prostitute by 13. Her story is compellingly told and more tragic than most as we get to know the other 13-year-old boys and girls she hangs out with who also sell themselves for their next fix. The original mass market paperback came out in 1982 and was never reissued. Used copies are over $100. Fortunately, a new translation came out a few years ago under the title Zoo Station a memoir by Christane F that is readily available. 

The book pushed all my buttons. Marlowe has brief-ish relationship with heroin in NYC in the ’90s and apparently, can “just stop.” Her studied reflections on heroin and its culture are cemented in absolute resistance to the idea that addiction is a disease. For me, this is a dangerous concept that makes me cringe, as much of her book did. But her resolute intelligence and ego make for fascinating reading. With a frown, I reflected on phrases like, “Living in an eternal present is not good for us, no matter how much we want it.” Her book reminded me of the many ways people define addiction. It inspired me to get crystal clear on my viewpoint before I took pen to page.

It isn’t often that a book comes along that feels surprisingly like sitting in meditation. Soulful Simplicity is that book. I loved the tempo and the energy of it. This book is such a beautiful combination of the art and practice of giving up what does not belong in a life of purpose. I have a copy on my desk to remind me to keep things simple and heartfelt. Courtney Carver has a lovely podcast with her daughter called Soul and Wit which offers us yet another reminder to be kind to ourselves no matter where we are on the journey of self-discovery and joy.

Using short stories, essays, and memoir selections from such authors as Poe, Tolstoy, Dorthey Parker, and Cheever, this book is an anthology of literature on addiction. Poe’s short story, “The Black Cat,” captures the madness that comes of alcoholism. Tolstoy’s essay offers sage advice about the nature of addiction. A lesser-known but standout story by Donna Steiner, “Sleeping with Alcohol,” teaches us what it’s like to be in love with an alcoholic and watching that person self-destruct. I’m a professor of English, and I used this book in a class I taught called “The Literature of Addiction,” alongside Dirk Hanson’s The Chemical Carousel as a primer for better understanding addiction before launching into stories, essays, and memoirs about it. The short stories in Under the Influence: The Literature of Addiction are entertaining as well as enlightening, and its other selections are just as informative as the books I previously mentioned.

This is another memoir that pulled me right in. Like Hepola, I loved the excitement of the whole bar scene, and quite often, drank until I blacked out. Trying to blackout things from my childhood that caused me so much anxiety and pain. And then having to remember and heal from it all when I got sober. 

Oh my gosh, there’s a brilliant chapter in this memoir about a friend divorce that I’ve reread about a dozen times.

With ruthless honesty, Jarrell describes the deep intimacy of her relationship with her best friend from college and her role in sabotaging it. She compares her flaws to those of her father who "swam darkly in his own alcoholic brew.” And yet, despite the rawness of Jarrell’s story, this book beams out hope and light.

While the author ended up marrying an alcoholic, she did “get away” or escape her family legacy. She even credits addiction, or maybe learning to manage it, with putting her and her husband “on a path to saving themselves.”  

Naga’s beautiful, poetic prose is pervaded with an overwhelming sense that things will end very badly.

An Arab-American woman meets a “boy from Shobrakheit,” and the two begin a damaged, damaging romance in a book that’s been described as a “postcolonial novel for the twenty-first century.”

Desire mixes up with more complicated feelings, such as pity and resentment, feelings that stem from their cultural and class differences, and their relationship, told in alternating points-of-view, is soon touched with a threat of violence—and then more than a threat—of violence. 

No list of books for Dads would be complete without this one from my buddy, Al Roker. In Don’t Make Me Stop This Car, Al looks at the highs and lows of being a parent. Not only does it have his classic Roker charm and sense of humor, but he also writes about his experiences with infertility treatments and adoption. It’s become a favorite because he’s been a great friend and mentor to me. 

If you desire to be well this is the first step on the journey. Dr. Saundra is a truly kind and compassionate doctor. She guides us through the tough issues of not taking proper care of ourselves and offers inspiration on how to give us a soft place to rest. She gives us action steps we can do every day to reclaim our emotional, physical, and spiritual health. I was thrilled to be an invited guest on her ground-breaking I Choose My Best Life podcast to talk about resilience and recovery from addiction. I hope you love this book as much as I did!

This book came out in 1996, six years after I got sober. It was the first memoir I read about alcohol abuse and the title and subtitle were the things that immediately grabbed my attention. For 25 years, I was in love with the way drinking made me feel (or better yet, not feel), so I knew I would like this book. And even though, at the time, Knapp’s credentials were way out of my league, I related to so much of her story. Like going to a meeting, it made me feel less alone. 

I know, I know, it's supposed to be pretentious and self-negating to talk about the great DFW now. But that doesn't change the fact that in his imagining an America where everyone is so mesmerized by a piece of entertainment that they've lost their minds... well, dude imagined the iPhone. Also, the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment.

It's gigantic and meandering and a slog at times, but no single novel predicted our hellscape better than this one. Sorry. That's prophecy.

Drawing upon stories from all the great spiritual traditions, Kurtz and Ketcham keep shocking us out of our assumptions about the spiritual life, and inviting us to abandon the pursuit of perfection that many of us identify with it. They pull the rug out from under us, telling us what we don’t expect to hear. There’s something comical about embracing imperfection. But if they’re right, it’s the only real alternative to living tragically. I suggest watching Chaplin’s City Lights and Laurel and Hardy’s The Music Box, as you make your way through the chapters of this book.

This gem of a book presents the argument that parents should consider delaying giving their children smartphones until the child becomes an adult and has attained certain life skills. A mother of four, former nurse, and founder of ScreenStrong, author Melanie Hempe lived through digital addiction in her own family and is passionate about helping other families avoid her “mistakes”. At the same time she is well-versed in the current scientific literature across a broad array of tech-related topics, and she successfully “walks the talk”: her teens abstain from gaming/social media/smartphone use, but they are far from being socially ostracized - a common fear amongst parents.

More and more of our interactions occur via social media. This does more than poison our minds; it poisons our relationships, including our most intimate one: life partner. 

There are established downsides to social media, including its addictive nature and oxymoronic means of fomenting alienation. It promotes comparison-driven inferiority complexes, and allows racists and bigots to hide behind pseudonyms. 

But for marriages, social media’s most worrisome issue is its promotion of phoniness. Cyber platforms prompt people to portray themselves in a faux-optimized light – happier, wealthier, and more moral than they really are. They also promote groupthink and reticence driven by fear of backlash. 

A marriage in recovery requires two honest, unabashed partners. Two people trying to heal must minimize the festering wounds inherent in social media.