Recovery Memoirs

In 1996, Scott was nineteen and lost in adulthood with an endless job and no future ambitions. Teenage Degenerate is his story about drug addiction, music and growing up. Over the course of ten months, he quickly descends into the dark and dangerous world of crystal methamphetamine. Scott experiments with crystal meth in a dark, deserted parking lot in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado and soon after his crew of misfits will do almost anything for their next high.

Meg Wilson watched her world fall apart when her husband confessed years of sexual addiction. She has an intimate knowledge of all you may have felt-and she's lived to tell about it. With honesty and hopefulness, Meg uses her own story, along with other examples and Scripture, to help women cope and find their way out of the darkness of their husbands' sexual compulsions. She wants you to know that God's first concern is for your relationship with Him - not your circumstances.

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.

Ruth M. Glenn wasn’t surprised the first time her husband beat her. She was hurt and disappointed but after a childhood in a broken and violent home, she was not surprised. After all, this was just the way things were, right? It was only after she lay bleeding in a carwash parking lot, after being shot three times by him, that Glenn resolved—if she managed to survive—to spend the rest of her life standing up to domestic violence.

Nearly every American knows someone who has been affected by the opioid crisis. Addiction is a trans-partisan issue that impacts individuals from every walk of life. Millions of Americans are tired of watching their loved ones die while politicians ignore this issue. Where is the solution? Where is the hope? Where's the outrage? Ryan Hampton understands firsthand how easy it is to develop a dependency on opioids, and how destructive it can quickly become. Now, he is waging a permanent campaign to change our way of thinking about and addressing addiction in this country.

A pediatric oncologist and palliative care physician Dr. Adam B. Hill suffers stress and disillusionment with the culture of medicine. It led him to alcoholism, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Then, while in recovery, he loses a mentor to suicide, revealing the extent of the burnout epidemic in the medical field.

Brennan Manning has been dazzingly faithful in preaching and writing variations on the ragamuffin theme, Yes, Abba is very fond of you! But today the crowds are gone and the lights are dim, the patches on his knees have faded. If he ever was a ragamuffin, truly it is now. In this his final book, Brennan roves back his past, honoring the lives of the people closest to him, family and friends who've known the saint and the sinner, the boy and the man. Far from some chronological timeline, these memories are witness to the truth of life by one who has lived it.

As Melissa Bond raises her infant daughter and a special-needs one-year-old son, she suffers from unbearable insomnia, sleeping an hour or less each night. She loses her job as a journalist (a casualty of the 2008 recession), and her relationship with her husband grows distant. Her doctor casually prescribes benzodiazepines—a family of drugs that includes Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan—and increases her dosage regularly.

In this captivating memoir, one woman's journey unfolds - from the darkest depths of teenage abuse and addiction to the heights of personal and professional success. Her brave and vivid narrative, skillfully blending laughter and tears, reveals the enduring beauty that can emerge from life's darkest moments. Marked by scars and illuminated by triumphs, this is a gripping listen for anyone who has faced adversity, dared to hope, and believes in the boundless power of redemption.

For 21 years, Paul Merson played professional football. He won two First Division titles with Arsenal and was one of the finest players of his generation. But for 30 years, Paul Merson has also been an addict. Alcohol, drugs, gambling: a desperately unenviable cocktail of addictions and depression which has plagued his entire adult life and driven him to the verge of suicide.

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....

It is my absolute pleasure to add my own personal emotional tone as I read to you my story of redemption from trauma and addiction. "At the tender age of six, Mark Turnipseed received what he felt was a clear and devastating message: It isn't okay to like other boys, and if you do, you're bound for Hell. His confusion and self-hatred made him determined to become the boy he believed he was supposed to be, but in attempting to live a lie, he descended into a hell of his own making.

"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."

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.

Born to an abusive mother and a drug-dealer father, Ginelle Testa is not exactly set up for success—and her early years are just as troubled as one might expect. By the end of her thirteenth year, she’s started experimenting with alcohol and drugs, has fallen prey to anorexia, and has been sexually assaulted. And that’s only the beginning of her spiral down into addiction and disordered eating.

In this honest, yet humorous account of her year of not getting sh*tfaced, Pamela examines her long relationship with alcohol. She is shocked to realize just how much of a crutch alcohol has been for her. There is always a bottle of wine or prosecco around to help her manage the many demands of life as a freelancer and a parent.

With three children under five, a set of twins and a newborn, Rachell Brownell wanted to feel like an adult again. So she turned to three bottles of white wine a night. Through wit and honesty, Brownell lets listeners into her world of addiction, but also towards hope. Through examples of community, wisdom, and support, this book provides a map for anyone trying to get through the early stages of recovery.Mommy Doesn’t Drink Here Anymore.

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.

When Liz Fraser's partner fell into a catastrophic vortex of depression and alcoholism, Liz found herself in a relentless hailstorm of lies, loneliness and fear, looking after their young child on her own, heartbroken, mentally shattered and with no idea what was happening or what to do. As she and her family moved between Cambridge, Venice and Oxford, she kept the often shocking truth entirely to herself for a long time, trying in vain to help her partner find a path to sobriety, until she herself finally broke from the trauma and started to speak out.

When her six-year-old daughter found her collapsed on the kitchen floor, Rachel had no idea how much her life was about to change. A brain scan revealed a dark shadowy mass, a huge abnormal growth of tissue that, whilst benign, was still growing and would surely kill her. It was too big to operate on. It needed to be "managed", and Rachel had, at best, two years to live. Refusing to accept the bleak prognosis, Rachel was determined to stay alive.