Book picks similar to
Raising the Bottom: Making Mindful Choices in a Drinking Culture by Lisa Boucher
non-fiction
self-help
alcoholism
memoir
Alcohol Lied to Me: The Intelligent Way to Escape Alcohol Addiction
Craig Beck - 2011
A director of several companies & at one time the trustee of a large children’s charity. Craig was a successful & functioning professional man in spite of a ‘2 bottles of wine a night’ drinking habit. For 20 years he struggled with problem drinking, all the time refusing to label himself an alcoholic because he didn't believe he met the stereotypical image that the word portrayed. He tried countless ways to cut down; attempting ‘dry months’, banning himself from drinking spirits, only drinking at the weekend & special occasions (and found that it is amazing how even the smallest of event can suddenly become ‘special’). All these 'will power' based attempts to stop drinking failed (exactly as they were destined to do). Slowly he discovered the truth about alcohol addiction & one by one all the lies he had previously believed started to fall apart. For the first time he noticed that he genuinely didn’t want to drink anymore. In this book he will lead you though the same amazing process. The Craig Beck method is unique... - No need to declare yourself an alcoholic. - A permanent cure, not a lifetime struggle. - No group meetings or expensive rehab. - No humiliation, no pain and 100% no ‘will power’ required. - Treats the source of the problem not the symptoms. What people are saying about ‘Alcohol Lied To Me’: “I was so excited to find your method. I had never seen anything quite like it so of course I enthusiastically purchased it. I have to say I was blown away by the unique frankness. It REALLY hits home in a very good way. It's as if a very caring, non-judgemental friend can see right through me in a way that can only be known by someone who's been through it all. I am extremely grateful to have found your book and your logical genius. Thanks from DP (Arizona, U.S.A)” www.StopDrinkingExpert.com
The Gift of Forgiveness: Inspiring Stories from Those Who Have Overcome the Unforgivable
Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt - 2020
Here, Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt shows us what we can learn from those who have struggled with forgiveness, some still struggling, and others who have been able to forgive what might seem truly unforgivable. The book features experiences from those well-known and unknown, including Elizabeth Smart, who learned to forgive her captors; Sue Klebold, whose son, Dylan, was one of the Columbine shooters, learning empathy and how to forgive herself; Chris Williams, who forgave the drunken teenager who killed his wife and child; and of course Schwarzenegger Pratt's own challenges and path to forgiveness in her own life. All provide different journeys to forgiveness and the process--sometimes slow and thorny, sometimes almost instantaneous--by which they learned to forgive and let go. The Gift of Forgiveness is a perfect blend of personal insights, powerful quotations, and hard-won wisdom for those seeking a way to live with greater acceptance, grace, and peace.Elizabeth Smart --Chris Williams --Sarah Klein --Polly Sheppard --Christy Little Jones --Immacelée Ilibagiza --Ron Hall --Deborah Copaken --Nadia Bolz-Weber --Lewis Howes --Scarlett Lewis --DeVon Franklin --Mark Rozzi --Michelle LeClair --Sue Klebold --Talinda Bennington --Mark Kelly --Iskra Lawrence --Tanya Brown --Adel Altamimi --Cora Jakes Coleman --Sebastián Marroquín
The Mindset
Ace Bowers - 2019
He was forced to choose which path he was going to take: continue the cycle of family poverty or break it. The Mindset is an inspirational memoir of Ace Bowers’ personal transformation from janitor to millionaire. Bowers began his journey uneducated, overweight, addicted to cigarettes, in debt, and depressed. Revealing the skeletons in his closet for the first time set the scene for how he got to the point of cleaning a motel for $6 an hour. Bowers’ detailed accounts of his turbulent and traumatizing childhood illustrated what it is like growing up in a poor, alcoholic, and abusive family. The metamorphosis began as soon as he changed his mindset. Within five years, Bowers was able to completely turn his life around, going from trash to technology. This memoir illuminates step by step his unconventional path to wealth, health, and happiness.
The Gratitude Diaries: How a Year Looking on the Bright Side Can Transform Your Life
Janice Kaplan - 2015
Her pioneering reseach was praised in People and Vanity Fair and hailed on TV shows including Today, The O’Reilly Factor, and CBS’s The Talk. On New Year’s Eve, journalist and former Parade Editor-in-Chief Janice Kaplan makes a promise to be grateful and look on the bright side of whatever happens. She realizes that how she feels over the next months will have less to do with the events that occur than her own attitude and perspective. Getting advice at every turn from psychologists, academics, doctors, and philosophers, she brings readers on a smart and witty journey to discover the value of appreciating what you have. Relying on both amusing personal experiences and extensive research, Kaplan explores how gratitude can transform every aspect of life including marriage and friendship, money and ambition, and health and fitness. She learns how appreciating your spouse changes the neurons of your brain and why saying thanks helps CEOs succeed. Through extensive interviews with experts and lively conversations with real people including celebrities like Matt Damon, Daniel Craig, and Jerry Seinfeld, Kaplan discovers the role of gratitude in everything from our sense of fulfillment to our children’s happiness. With warmth, humor, and appealing insight, Janice’s journey will empower readers to think positively and start living their own best year ever.
Drunkard: A Hard-Drinking Life
Neil Steinberg - 2008
He loves his two young sons. He loves his job and his ramshackle old farmhouse in the suburbs. But he also loves to drink, a passion that rolls merrily along for twenty-five years until one terrible night when his two worlds collide and shatter. Drunkard is the story of one man’s fall down the rabbit hole of alcoholism, and his slow crawl back out. Sentenced to an outpatient rehab program, Steinberg discovers that twenty-eight days of therapy cannot reverse the toll decades of vigorous drinking take on one’s soul. In clear, distinctive, honest, and funny prose, Steinberg comes to grips with his actions, rebuilds his marriage, and reclaims his life. Unlike outlandish tales of addiction’s extremes, Steinberg’s story is a regular person’s account of the stark-yet-common realities of a problem faced by millions around the world. Drunkard is an important addition to the pantheon of critically acclaimed, bestselling memoirs such as The Tender Bar, Drinking: A Love Story, and Smashed.
The Hilarious World of Depression
John Moe - 2020
As Moe came to terms with his own illness, he began to see similar patterns of behavior and coping mechanisms surfacing in conversations with others, including high-profile comedians who'd struggled with the disease. Moe saw that there was tremendous comfort and community in open dialogue about these shared experiences and that humor had a unique power. Thus was born the podcast The Hilarious World of Depression.Inspired by the immediate success of the podcast, Moe has written a remarkable investigation of the disease, part memoir of his own journey, part treasure trove of laugh-out-loud stories and insights drawn from years of interviews with some of the most brilliant minds facing similar challenges. Throughout the course of this powerful narrative, depression's universal themes come to light, among them, struggles with identity, lack of understanding of the symptoms, the challenges of work-life, self-medicating, the fallout of the disease in the lives of our loved ones, the tragedy of suicide, and the hereditary aspects of the disease.The Hilarious World of Depression illuminates depression in an entirely fresh and inspiring way.
God and Starbucks: An NBA Star Loses Everything, Starts Over, and Achieves Success
Vin Baker - 2017
While he excelled on the court, Vin harbored a dark secret: a dependency on drugs and alcohol that began after the clean-cut preacher’s son turned pro. Eventually becoming a full-blown yet functional alcoholic, Vin convinced himself he played better under the influence—until his addiction cost him his basketball career, his fortune, and his health.But Vin’s story isn’t a tragic fall from grace. It is a joyous tale of salvation. For Vin, hitting rock bottom was a difficult yet transformative experience that led him to renew his relationship with God and embrace life in a rich and fulfilling new way. Today the manager of a Starbucks and a youth minister, Vin has found more security and happiness in his ordinary working life than in all his years in the glamorous world of professional basketball.God and Starbucks is a wise and unflinching look at the real dangers of addiction and the importance of taking charge of your life with meaning and purpose. It’s a powerful memoir about reaching the top and beginning again from the bottom—an inspiring personal tale of humility and grace that reminds us what is truly important in our lives.
Available: A Very Honest Account of Life After Divorce
Laura Friedman WilliamsLaura Friedman Williams - 2021
Sure, their sex had become a little formulaic, and yes, their life together mostly revolved around their kids, but whose doesn’t?Then came the shocking, utterly clichéd discovery of his affair. Five months of emotional turmoil later, Laura found herself single for the first time in 27 years and with two choices: to eke out her existence, or reinvent herself. A little encouragement from her friends and one astonishing one-night stand later, she realised that she had a sexual appetite she’d never explored, and that being a mother didn’t mean she had to ignore it. She could be independent, a good mother, and have a great sex life all at the same time… couldn’t she? From G-spots to bald spots, dirty talk to dating fiascos, Available is the unflinchingly honest, empowering, and humorous true story of a life turned downside up.
Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore: Getting Through the First Year of Sobriety
Rachael Brownell - 2009
The loving mother of twins and a newborn, Brownell used alcohol to maintain a sense of her adult self and be more than "just mommy." It didn't take long before her drinking spiraled out of control, consuming her life and marriage, and she realized that she needed serious help. Both heartwrenching and inspiring, this is Brownell's truelife story, from the first thirty days to the year mark. Mommy Doesn't Drink Here Anymore is not a book that preaches or simply takes the reader through the Twelve Steps. It provides hope and motivation to get into a program and balance your life as a mother and a recovering alcoholic.
Two Minus One: A Memoir
Kathryn Taylor - 2018
But five years later, in a car packed with food she has carefully prepared to nourish her husband’s dying brother, the other shoe does drop. Taylor’s husband unexpectedly proclaims he is, “done with the marriage and doesn’t want to talk about it.”With this, the life Taylor has come to know is over. Relying on the strength of a lifelong friend who refuses to let her succumb to the intense waves of grief, she slowly begins to find her way out of the shadows of grief. Over the course of two years, through appointments with attorneys and therapists, purging shared belongings, and pushing herself to meet new people and do new things, Taylor not only regains a sense of control in her life, she also learns to enjoy the new life she has built, the friendships she’s formed—and to savor her newfound strength.
Down Size: 12 Truths for Turning Pants-Splitting Frustration into Pants-Fitting Success
Ted Spiker - 2014
Or a bad burrito. (He’s also eaten a 76-ounce steak, asserted that his wife’s post-pregnancy jeans were the best-fitting pants he ever wore, and was asked by his own childhood doctor if his “feminine shape” embarrassed him at the beach.) In Down Size, Ted takes readers on an inspiring, candid, and comical journey, exploring the art and science of weight loss throughhis own struggles as a pear-shaped man in a not-so-pear-shaped world, with research about food, exercise, and the psychology of losing weight. He reveals twelve truths about successful weight loss, in areas such as temptation, frustration, nutrition, and inspiration. Some truths:• Redefine the Definition of Data• Leave Behind Your Extra Gland• Think Process, Not Outcome• Train Shorter, Train Harder Combining science, personal stories, expert interviews, and advice, Down Size is an entertaining, field-tested, and research-based look at how men and women can finally find the body they want.
Love People, Use Things: Because the Opposite Never Works
Joshua Fields Millburn - 2021
Now, imagine a life with more: more time, more meaningful relationships, more growth and contribution and contentment—a life of passion, unencumbered by the trappings of the chaotic world around you. What you’re imagining is an intentional life. And to get there, you’ll have to let go of some clutter that’s in the way. In Love People Use Things, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus move past simple decluttering to show how minimalism makes room to reevaluate and heal the seven essential relationships in our lives: stuff, truth, self, money, values, creativity, and people. They use their own experiences—and those of the people they have met along the minimalist journey—to provide a template for how to live a fuller, more meaningful life.Because once you have less, you can make room for the right kind of more.
As Bill Sees It: The A.A. Way of Life...Selected Writings of A.A.'s Co-Founder
Bill Wilson - 1967
It is felt that this material may become an aid to individual meditation and a stimulant to group discussion, and may well lead to a still wider reading of all our literature.~ Bill W., April 1967
How to Develop Your Family Mission Statement
Stephen R. Covey - 2001
This family mission statement kit will help you:
Unite your family around a common sense of purpose and mission
Develop more patience and the capacity to solve problems proactively
Strengthen you children and family members in a turbulent world
Eliminate ineffective family habits
Transform family life from a desperate, miserable, day-to-day grind to a family life rich with meaningful relationships
SMART Recovery Handbook
Rosemary Hardin - 2014
The Handbook will cover the heart of SMART's 4-Point Program. 1: Building and Maintaining Motivation 2: Coping with Urges 3: Managing Thoughts, Feelings and Behaviors 4: Living a Balanced Life SMARTS approach: Teaches self-empowerment and self-reliance. Provides meetings that are educational, supportive and include open discussions. Encourages individuals to recover from addiction and alcohol abuse and live satisfying lives. Teaches techniques for self-directed change. Supports the scientifically informed use of psychological treatments and legally prescribed psychiatric and addiction medication. Works on substance abuse, alcohol abuse, addiction and drug abuse as complex maladaptive behaviors with possible physiological factors. Evolves as scientific knowledge in addiction recovery evolves. Alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and other 12-step programs. The SMART Recovery Handbook can also be used in conjunction with the SMART community. SMART sponsors face-to-face meetings around the world, and daily on-line meetings. In addition, our online message board and 24/7 chat room are excellent forums to learn about SMART Recovery and obtain addiction recovery support. Find the SMART community at: www.smartrecovery.org. "Discover the Power of Choice!"