Recovery Memoirs

She had big plans of becoming a country music star, but her life went in a different direction than her dreams. She developed an eating disorder early in life to gain a sense of control in her strict upbringing. As she continued to struggle with body image and her obsession with being perfect her entire adult life, she was also met with other difficult situations. Her husband and father of her two eldest daughters, Dallas and Demi, had his own troubles that effected the entire family. She coped with alcohol and pills, forming a long-lasting addiction.

Richard Carlson Jr. was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was 21 years of age. His illness first manifested when he was an early adolescent. Modern psychiatry greatly failed Richard for over a decade. Then, after an incident involving the police, he truly understood that his diagnosis was real, and finally began the long process of recovery. Over 10 years later, his life is greatly improved. In the course of his treatment, Richard also recovered from depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and lethargy.

When Deb Brandon discovered that cavernous angiomas - tangles of malformed blood vessels in her brain - were behind the terrifying symptoms she'd been experiencing, she underwent one brain surgery. And then another. And then another. And that was just the beginning. The book also includes an introduction by Connie Lee, founder and president of the Angioma Alliance. Unlike other memoirs that focus on injury crisis and acute recovery, But My Brain Had Other Ideas follows Brandon’s story all the way through to long-term recovery, revealing without sugarcoating or sentimentality Brandon’s struggles - and ultimate triumph.

As a long-time Christian, Heather Kopp never expected to become an out-of-control alcoholic. Engaging, funny and bracingly honest, Kopp shares her remarkable journey into darkness... and back to the light again. Her story reveals the unique challenges and spiritual conundrums Christians face when they become ensnared in an addiction. If you love Jesus but shop too much, drink too much, eat too much, crush on men who aren't your husband, or otherwise fixate on doing things you hate but can't stop doing, Sober Mercies is for you.

This audiobook is about a 51-year-old active, independent, healthy, Christian woman who was doing what she loved running a art business and working for a travel company. On October 8, 2008 she suffered a massive stroke that would change her life forever. She tells of her miraculous recovery and her faith and trust in God knowing he would bring her through the many challenges she would face to obtain what she had worked many years for.

Susan Burton's world changed in an instant when her five-year-old son was killed by a van driving down their street. Consumed by grief and without access to professional help, Susan self-medicated, becoming addicted first to cocaine then to crack. As a resident of South Los Angeles, a Black community under siege in the War on Drugs, it was but a matter of time before Susan was arrested. She cycled in and out of prison for over 15 years; never was she offered therapy or treatment for addiction.

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.

Famously neurotic comedian Richard Lewis finds himself on a gurney in the ER at the age of 44, hallucinating from excess cocaine use and his body poisoned by acute alcoholism. The same dysfunctions that had been the basis for his successful stage persona and inspired his best material had, it seemed, turned on him. In this very funny, deeply honest, and inspiring book, Lewis explores how he got there, how he finally got on the road to recovery, and how he copes with being Richard Lewis sober on a daily basis.

This is a very real and bloody look at the journey I made from 19 to 29. I will walk you through the icy halls of drug addiction and dealing, college in Santa Barbara (specifically Isla Vista), depression, suicide, and overdoses. The second part of the book I could only write just recently, as I was, by the Grace of God, able to live the life I knew I always should. Please come with me through the very real and honest look at what it was like to be a young man in the 2010s and how through a million close calls, I finally found life.

Years in foster care, ejected from the juvenile justice system, addicted to drugs, a victim of human trafficking - all before she was 19 years old. Gutter Kid is a poignant and brutally honest memoir that chronicles the life of songwriter Keta Loren. In it, she chronicles a life fueled by a hard-fought battle for survival. A cautionary tale in some respects, this story is also one of perseverance, determination, true grit, defiance, and ultimately, triumph for a young woman whom society had cast aside as just another sad statistic.

“You were like this once. What did you do to get better?” A day out from a mental institution, a woman devastated by flashbacks from childhood trauma poses this question to her big brother. Within a few weeks, she took her own life. This book is the answer that her brother wished he could have offered. Spiritual director and professor Frank Rogers had been there. As a young adult, he too was tormented by trauma suffered in the same family.

In 2014, novelist Leslie Schwartz was sentenced to 90 days in Los Angeles County Jail for a DUI and battery of an officer. It was the most harrowing and holy experience of her life. Following a 414-day relapse into alcohol and drug addiction after more than a decade sober, Schwartz was sentenced and served her time with only six months' sobriety. The damage she inflicted that year upon her friends, her husband, her daughter, and herself was nearly impossible to fathom. Incarceration might have ruined her altogether, if not for the stories that sustained her while she was behind bars.

Like the never-ending war on terror, the drugs war is a multi-billion-dollar industry that won’t go down without a fight. Pills, Powder, and Smoke explains why. The war on drugs has been official American policy since the 1970s, with the UK, Europe and much of the world following suit. It is at best a failed policy, according to best-selling author Antony Loewenstein. Its direct results have included mass incarceration in the US, extreme violence in different parts of the world, the backing of dictatorships and surging drug addiction globally.

Patrick J. Kennedy, the former congressman and youngest child of Senator Ted Kennedy, details his personal and political battle with mental illness and addiction, exploring mental health care's history in the country alongside his and every family's private struggles. A Common Struggle weaves together Kennedy's private and professional narratives, echoing Kennedy's philosophy that for him, the personal is political and the political personal.

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.

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is a graphic, honest, autobiographical account written by Thomas De Quincey, about his laudanum addiction and its profound effect on his life. Confessions was the first major work De Quincey published and the one which won him lasting fame. This intensely riveting audiobook edition is therefore a must for all those interested in the pharmacological arts, altered states, the pitfalls of addiction, and the age-old quest for expanded consciousness.

Justo cuando Glennon Doyle comenzaba a sentir que lo tenía todo, tres niños felices, un esposo cariñoso y una carrera como escritora tan exitosa que su primer libro alcanzó la cima de la lista best seller del New York Times, su esposo le reveló su infidelidad y se vio forzada a darse cuenta de que nada es lo que parece ser.

For decades, millions of ICU survivors left the hospital with disabling symptoms all now recognised as post-intensive care syndrome, or PICS. Many COVID survivors also suffer from PICS. Dr Ely’s ground-breaking investigations advanced the understanding of PICS and introduced crucial changes that reshaped intensive care. Dr Ely shows that this new way—technology plus touch—is the future of health care and is a proven path toward reclaiming vitality. Full of wisdom and heart, Every Deep-Drawn Breath is an essential resource for all those affected by critical illness.

At the age of 27, married, living in New York, and working in book design, Mary Cregan gives birth to her first child, a daughter she names Anna. But it’s apparent that something is terribly wrong, and two days later, Anna dies - plunging Cregan into suicidal despair. Decades later, sustained by her work, a second marriage, and a son, Cregan reflects on this pivotal experience and attempts to make sense of it. She weaves together literature and research with details from her own ordeal - and the still visible scar of her suicide attempt....

In 2017, at the age of 62, the writer and filmmaker Stephen Trombley left his native America for a simpler life in rural France. He found a little place in the southwest, but after only five months, he was struck down by a stroke that left his right arm paralyzed and his brains scrambled. While he was in hospital, his relationship failed. Alone, broke, and with only a schoolboy’s grasp of the language, Trombley found himself completely dependent on the French medical system. As soon as he was able, Trombley started keeping a diary, recording his long and painful journey.