Suburban Junky: From Honor Roll to Heroin Addict


Jude Hassan - 2012
    Louis. For most of his life, he was an all-around normal kid. He excelled in sports and academics, and cherished his time at home with his family. It wasn’t until he turned fifteen that things went seriously wrong. While attending his first high school party, he was introduced to pot and alcohol. Needless to say, he gave in to the pressure. A month after that, he discovered heroin. The drug had just made its way into the suburban party scene, and Jude was sure that he could get away with doing it only once. He was sadly mistaken. Within a few short months, his entire life was in shambles. His fate appeared certain, but it was just the beginning.​In a series of events that leaves you grasping for the next page, Jude spares no amount of detail in his account of his near-decade long struggle with drug addiction, and the horrors he witnessed along the way.

Keeping Secrets


Suzanne Somers - 1988
    It's the story she wrote for America's millions of adult children of alcoholics, people who don't drink, yet suffer from and need help against the ravages of this insidious disease. And it's a story of incredible courage, a candid, sometimes shocking autobiography of a woman who dared to face the dark side of her soul and triumph over it.

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness


Kay Redfield Jamison - 1995
    The personal memoir of a manic depressive and an authority on the subject describes the onset of the illness during her teenage years and her determined journey through the realm of available treatments.

How to Weep in Public: Feeble Offerings on Depression from One Who Knows


Jacqueline Novak - 2015
    Beginning with her earliest blue moments of infancy, and hop-scotching through her exploration of the world of pharmaceuticals, before bounding right back to her parents' couch, Jacqueline Novak will introduce you to the ABC's (Adderall! Benzos! Catatonia!) of depression and reveal, funnily enough, that a lot can happen even when you're standing still.  Or, as it happens, lying down. Whether you’re coping with the occasional down day, or thrive fully in Picasso’s blue period, How to Weep in Public is the perfect place to regroup between those nagging Tony Robbins tapes and that exhausting amount of Leaning In. So sit back, relax, and let Jacqueline Novak teach you how to carpe depressem with the rest of them.

Time on Fire


Evan Handler - 1996
    Evan Handler has played leading roles in seven broadway productions. This book is based on his hit off-Broadway play, which THE NEW YORK TIMES called laceratingly funny and self-revealing.

The Language of Kindness: A Nurse's Story


Christie Watson - 2018
    She takes us by her side down hospital corridors to visit the wards and meet her unforgettable patients.In the neonatal unit, premature babies fight for their lives, hovering at the very edge of survival, like tiny Emmanuel, wrapped up in a sandwich bag. On the cancer wards, the nurses administer chemotherapy and, long after the medicine stops working, something more important--which Watson learns to recognize when her own father is dying of cancer. In the pediatric intensive care unit, the nurses wash the hair of a little girl to remove the smell of smoke from the house fire. The emergency room is overcrowded as ever, with waves of alcohol and drug addicted patients as well as patients like Betty, a widow suffering chest pain, frail and alone. And the stories of the geriatric ward--Gladys and older patients like her--show the plight of the most vulnerable members of our society.

Building a Life Worth Living: A Memoir


Marsha M. Linehan - 2020
    "Because if you were, it would give all of us so much hope."Over the years, DBT had saved the lives of countless people fighting depression and suicidal thoughts, but Linehan had never revealed that her pioneering work was inspired by her own desperate struggles as a young woman. Only when she received this question did she finally decide to tell her story.In this remarkable and inspiring memoir, Linehan describes how, when she was eighteen years old, she began an abrupt downward spiral from popular teenager to suicidal young woman. After several miserable years in a psychiatric institute, Linehan made a vow that if she could get out of emotional hell, she would try to find a way to help others get out of hell too, and to build a life worth living. She went on to put herself through night school and college, living at a YWCA and often scraping together spare change to buy food. She went on to get her PhD in psychology, specializing in behavior therapy. In the 1980s, she achieved a breakthrough when she developed Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, a therapeutic approach that combines acceptance of the self and ways to change. Linehan included mindfulness as a key component in therapy treatment, along with original and specific life-skill techniques. She says, You can't think yourself into new ways of acting; you can only act yourself into new ways of thinking.Throughout her extraordinary scientific career, Marsha Linehan remained a woman of deep spirituality. Her powerful and moving story is one of faith and perseverance. Linehan shows, in Building a Life Worth Living, how the principles of DBT really work--and how, using her life skills and techniques, people can build lives worth living.

Eat, Drink, Run: How I Got Fit Without Going Too Mad


Bryony Gordon - 2018
    Yet somehow, as she began to recover from the emotional rollercoaster of laying her life bare in her mental health memoir MAD GIRL, she started to realise that getting outside, moving her body and talking to others for whom life was also an occasional challenge, might actually help her. Going for a run might not banish her sadness but at least it might show it that she was damn well trying to beat it, which is sometimes half the battle. As she began to run further she started to see the limitations she had imposed on her life more clearly. Maybe rather than sitting on the sofa watching the world go by, fulfilling your dreams was just about standing up and taking that first step. Maybe you can do it too.In April 2017, less than a year after she had weighed herself at over 16 stone but stepped off the scales and started training anyway, Bryony Gordon ran all 26 and 3/4 miles of the London Marathon. Here, in her new amusing memoir, she shows us how extraordinary things can happen to us all if we're just willing to keep going.

Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age


Sanjay Gupta - 2020
    Throughout our life, we look for ways to keep our mind sharp and effortlessly productive. Now, globetrotting neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta offers insights from top scientists all over the world, whose cutting-edge research can help you heighten and protect brain function and maintain cognitive health at any age. Keep Sharp debunks common myths about aging and cognitive decline, explores whether there’s a “best” diet or exercise regimen for the brain, and explains whether it’s healthier to play video games that test memory and processing speed, or to engage in more social interaction. Discover what we can learn from “super-brained” people who are in their eighties and nineties with no signs of slowing down—and whether there are truly any benefits to drugs, supplements, and vitamins. Dr. Gupta also addresses brain disease, particularly Alzheimer’s, answers all your questions about the signs and symptoms, and shows how to ward against it and stay healthy while caring for a partner in cognitive decline. He likewise provides you with a personalized twelve-week program featuring practical strategies to strengthen your brain every day. Keep Sharp is the only owner’s manual you’ll need to keep your brain young and healthy regardless of your age!

Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania


Andy Behrman - 2002
    For years Andy Behrman hid his raging mania behind a larger-than-life personality. He sought a high wherever he could find one and changed jobs the way some people change outfits: filmmaker, PR agent, art dealer, stripper-whatever made him feel like a cartoon character, invincible and bright. Misdiagnosed by psychiatrists and psychotherapists for years, his condition exacted a terrible price: out-of-control euphoric highs and tornadolike rages of depression that put his life in jeopardy.Ignoring his crescendoing illness, Behrman struggled to keep up appearances, clinging to the golden-boy image he had cultivated in his youth. But when he turned to art forgery, he found himself the subject of a scandal lapped up by the New York media, then incarcerated, then under house arrest. And for the first time the golden boy didn’t have a ready escape hatch from his unraveling life. Ingesting handfuls of antidepressants and tranquilizers and feeling his mind lose traction, he opted for the last resort: electroshock therapy.At once hilarious and harrowing, Electroboy paints a mesmerizing portrait of a man held hostage by his in-satiable desire to consume. Along the way, it shows us the New York that never sleeps: a world of strip clubs, after-hours dives, and twenty-four-hour coffee shops, whose cheap seductions offer comfort to the city’s lonely souls. This unforgettable memoir is a unique contribution to the literature of mental illness and introduces a writer whose energy may well keep you up all night.From the Hardcover edition.

First, You Cry


Betty Rollin - 1976
    NBC News correspondent Betty Rollin, glamorous,  successful, and happily married, had it all -- and then she learned that she had a malignant tumor in her breast.  Written with wit, warmth, and soul searching honesty, First, You Cry is the inspiring, true story about how one woman transformed the most terrifying ordeal of her life into a new beginning.  Now with a new introduction and epilogue, this unique memoir serves as a fascinating retrospective of the twenty-five years since Rollin's first mastectomy and, given the continuing threat of breast cancer, tells a story that will inform all women as it touches them with its honesty and even, humor.

The Other Side of Silence: A Psychiatrist's Memoir of Depression


Linda Gask - 2015
    Artfully crafted and told with warmth and honesty, this is the story of Linda’s journey, interwoven with insights into her patients’ diverse experiences of depression -inextricably linked with problems in the past and the present such as vulnerability, fear, loss, loneliness, dependence and grief.  She sets out to convey, in a new and original way, how it truly feels to experience this devastating illness, what psychotherapy is about, and the role of medication—and provides hope for those who suffer from depression and their loved ones while busting the stigma of mental illness.

Everything That Remains: A Memoir by the Minimalists


Joshua Fields Millburn - 2013
    Until he didn't anymore. Blindsided by the loss of his mother and his marriage in the same month, Millburn started questioning every aspect of the life he had built for himself. Then, he accidentally discovered a lifestyle known as minimalism...and everything started to change. That was four years ago. Since, Millburn, now 32, has embraced simplicity. In the pursuit of looking for something more substantial than compulsory consumption and the broken American Dream, he jettisoned most of his material possessions, paid off loads of crippling debt, and walked away from his six-figure career. So, when everything was gone, what was left? Not a how-to book but a why-to book, Everything That Remains is the touching, surprising story of what happened when one young man decided to let go of everything and begin living more deliberately. Heartrending, uplifting, and deeply personal, this engrossing memoir is peppered with insightful (and often hilarious) interruptions by Ryan Nicodemus, Millburn's best friend of twenty years.

Addict Chick: Sex, Drugs & Rock 'N' Roll


Amanda Meredith - 2016
    At 34, Amanda Meredith had it all - A successful career, a home, a child, and everything that should have made her happy. She was also crazy in love; his name was Cage, and their love would become her first addiction—but not her last. Some would say that love destroyed her, but what she let ravage her mind, body, and soul had nothing to do with love and everything to do with a deep-seated need to destroy herself. With the prick of a needle, and a shot of methamphetamine, she lost everything- her child, her career, and she lost Cage. Her story is not for the faint of heart. Addict Chick: Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘N’ Roll is her heartbreak, her sorrow, and the story of how she fought like hell to save herself, with a little help from the Man above. In this memoir, one woman proves that no matter who you are, and no matter how far you have fallen, nobody is beyond redemption.

What Doesn't Kill You: A Life with Chronic Illness - Lessons from a Body in Revolt


Tessa Miller - 2021
    At first, she toughed it out through searing pain, taking sick days from work, unable to leave the bathroom or her bed. But when it became undeniable that something was seriously wrong, Miller gave in to family pressure and went to the hospital—beginning a yearslong nightmare of procedures, misdiagnoses, and life-threatening infections. Once she was finally correctly diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, Miller faced another battle: accepting that she will never get better.Today, an astonishing three in five adults in the United States suffer from a chronic disease—a percentage expected to rise post-Covid. Whether the illness is arthritis, asthma, Crohn's, diabetes, endometriosis, multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, or any other incurable illness, and whether the sufferer is a colleague, a loved one, or you, these diseases have an impact on just about every one of us. Yet there remains an air of shame and isolation about the topic of chronic sickness. Millions must endure these disorders not only physically but also emotionally, balancing the stress of relationships and work amid the ever-present threat of health complications.Miller segues seamlessly from her dramatic personal experiences into a frank look at the cultural realities (medical, occupational, social) inherent in receiving a lifetime diagnosis. She offers hard-earned wisdom, solidarity, and an ultimately surprising promise of joy for those trying to make sense of it all.