28 essential books to build a solid, evolving recovery from addiction
Updated to address neurodivergence, burnout, and cptsd/relational trauma
I first published this list in February 2016 (you can still find it here), with a few casual updates over the years as I’ve read new books that I felt expanded our/my understanding of addiction. The last time I updated it was 2017, and that version lives here on Substack. I think both of these are still excellent resources, especially for early recovery, because they were written from that perspective and while I was living it.
I've been meaning to write an updated list for the past five years to reflect the mind-bending advancements in our understanding of addiction, treatment, drug use, and recovery—Internal Family Systems therapy, harm reduction approaches, drug legalization movements, breakthrough medications like Ozempic, psychedelic medicine, our evolving understanding of trauma, neurodivergence, learning/processing differences and addiction, how hormones impact our use cycles—to name only a few. But I haven't until now, mostly because I've spent the past four years in a process of reconceptualizing my own recovery, reading all these new books I'm about to tell you about. It's only now that I can step back and see how profoundly I've changed through this process—more solidly healed, more grounded in my recovery, more unmasked, more process-over-outcomes focused, healthier and more integrated—and identify which books were essential companions along the way.
This list includes familiar titles that remain as crucial now as when I began healing in 2012. But you'll also discover newer territory: books on neurodivergence, trauma responses, narcissistic abuse, psychedelic therapies, and more.
How to use this resource
This is in no way meant to be a complete list—I’m sure there are significant works I’ve left off, or works vital to you that weren’t to me—which is why I’ve also included a little crowd-sourced section at the bottom (I asked you all for your favorite recovery book, or first book that got you in the door).
I also recommend buying no more than one or two to start; if you’re overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it and just looking to dip your toe in, I recommend starting with one or two of these: Integral Recovery; Internal Family Systems Therapy for Addictions; Quit Like a Woman; This Naked Mind (alcohol specific); 30 Days to a New Relationship with Alcohol; When Things Fall Apart; and Beyond Addiction.
I started with one book—The EasyWay to Control Alcohol—and it went from there. One thing always leads to the next, and just starting anywhere is honestly the only way to go.
Lastly: it was a book that saved my life. Don’t underestimate the power of knowledge or small and subtle perspective shifts.
Please drop your personal favorites in the comments below. I am using an affiliate link system here, primarily through bookshop.org. I only use affiliate marketing for books, and I appreciate the support—a list like this takes years to compile, and I spent a lot of money on books to make it. :)
With so much love, rooting for you from here.
Holly
28 essential books to build a solid, evolving recovery from addiction
I’ve split this up into six sections: Frameworks and Systems (how to conceptualize/map a recovery); Reframing (how to think differently about the substance (or behavior, etc.); Neuroscience; Joy/Hope (ESSENTIAL!); Trauma (or “Clinically burnt-out and/or neurodivergent, potentially peri-menopausal targets of narcissistic abuse who fawn and have histories of addictive processes” (or, “If you know, you know”); and Crowd-Sourced. There is no real memoir in here at all, so please add your favorite. (Reading memoir was an essential part of my recovery; that said, there’s too many good ones to narrow it.)
Frameworks and Systems
How to conceptualize a holistic recovery, and your place in it.
1. Internal Family Systems Therapy for Addictions: Trauma-Informed, Compassion-Based Interventions for Substance Use, Eating, Gambling, and More | year. 2023 | author. Cece Sykes, Martha Sweezy, Richard C. Schwartz
This is one of those “just trust me” books. I started doing parts work (IFS or Internal Family Systems) in 2022 with my therapist, and all I can tell you is that it is healing what I thought would never be healed, and that if I'd found it a decade ago, I would have saved myself a lot of pain and struggle. You can start by reading the very popular No Bad Parts (I recommend listening on Audible; there are helpful guided meditations), but this particular book not only provides an excellent, straightforward overview of addictive processes, but is perhaps the most compassionate and empowering take on addictions I’ve ever read. One of you recommended it to me.
2. Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol | year. 2019 | pages. 352 | author. Holly Whitaker
This is my book, and it’s great. Part memoir, part commentary on why we drink the way we do, part investigation into why recovery frameworks are not designed for over half the population, part how-to, deeply researched, it is one of the best books on alcohol and addiction out there. It has sold around 600,000 copies to date (and is still selling). If you like this newsletter, you’ll probably dig it. Read this to feel empowered and excited about your decision and to understand why some parts of recovery feel harmful to you instead of helpful.
3. Integral Recovery: A Revolutionary Approach to the Treatment of Alcoholism and Addiction | year. 2013 | pages. 312 | author. John Dupuy
While some of what’s in this book might be a little outdated, this is still the gold standard in terms of mapping a recovery. What I said about it before: “If you want to understand exactly how to build a holistic approach to recovery, this is the book you must read. It is by far the most comprehensive modality that is available to us at this time, and is the framework from which my own recovery stands. John Dupuy not only takes the reader through an understanding of how addiction takes root, and why traditional modalities either fail to meet the mark or take us all the way, but provides a complete guide to how to structure an effective and evolutionary approach to recover from addiction and most importantly, thrive in life (for the rest of it).”
4. Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change (updated edition) | year. 2025 | pages. 384 | author. Foote, Wilkens
This is a book meant for friends and family members of folks in addictive processes, but I’ve found it to be an excellent resource for folks who are experiencing addiction themselves. It’s written by the founders of the Center for Motivation and Change, who are some of the pioneers of harm reduction-based addiction treatment in America, and who are ahead of their time (and have been for decades). This is also an excellent book for folks who are working with an addiction, and the best text that exists for loved ones, who often neglect their self-care and development when dealing with someone in an addictive process. (And remember, even if you’re in recovery, it’s likely you’re going to be a loved one someday, which is a whole other thing you’re gonna need guidance on.)
Reframing your relationship to the substance or behavior (mainly alcohol)
“Books that *could* turn you off your favorite drug”
5. 30 Days to a New Relationship with Alcohol | year. 2025 | pages. N/A | author. Holly Whitaker
This is an audio-only 30-day guide to help you, day by day, move through recovery and/or towards abstinence or just cutting back or just thinking differently about drinking. (Read more about it here, some sample meditations/days are here and here.) It’s based on a 40-day program I used to sell as an email course called “The Mantra Project,” which on its own helped a lot of people quit drinking or change their patterns. (I didn’t promote this book very much, but it’s one of the best things I’ve created, and I get notes almost every day from people letting me know how much it has helped/is helping them, no matter if their goal is to cut back or go full sober.)
6. This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life | year. 2015 | pages. 272 | author. Annie Grace
What I said about this book before: “I've written extensively about how much the book The Easy Way To Control Alcohol by Allen Carr impacted my recovery (or rather, gave me my recovery). I don't believe I would have had the success I did if I had started anywhere else, and also, I don't think I could have started anywhere else: I wanted to control alcohol, not eliminate it. The book completely flipped the idea of sobriety for me from something that seemed like a consequence and the worst possible scenario to something I 100% wanted (and continue to want). In the same vein as Carr’s work, Annie Grace's Control Alcohol achieves this same end. She carefully takes the reader through the reasons we as a society drink and our social conditioning around alcohol, and makes the same arguments as Carr: that drinking is a monumental waste of time, and recovery from it is akin to freedom, not loss. However, Annie's book has something that Carr's book doesn't: research. It's a well-documented book, written by a woman, and I highly recommend it to anyone who's struggling with sobriety/feeling deprived, as well as to anyone who's just starting out. If you’re feeling extra-credit-y, I encourage you to also read Carr's Easy Way and take the time with the final steps he suggests. When I first attempted sobriety, I wrote Carr’s steps out in my own language and words that made sense to me, and pasted them on the wall above my kitchen sink, and recited them daily. (See below.)
7. The Science of Weed | year. 2024 | pages. 544 | author. Godfrey Pearlson
Earlier this year, I wrote about how I started using cannabis again after years in recovery; I’m currently not using it (this is not a declaration of sobriety, just where I am now and what I’ve decided for myself). A lot of my current disuse has to do with understanding what pot does to your body, especially today’s supercharged strains. I think if I—a human who researches drugs for a living and is the author of multiple books on drugs—was in the dark about the downside of today’s pot, how it impacts your system, or how brutal the withdrawal can be when you stop using it, etc., a lot of us are. This isn’t a book designed to make you not want to use pot, but it’s a book that gives you a lot to consider if you do, and it’s the book primarily responsible for me deciding not to use it regularly and taking a significant break. I also want to mention Mary Giuliani’s book on recovering from CPTSD, and her chapter on using pot in her recovery, and discontinuing it: It's Not About Food, Drugs, or Alcohol: It's About Healing Complex PTSD
Neuroscience
Just the brain stuff.
8. The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is Not a Disease | year. 2016 | pages. 256 | author. Marc Lewis
This book came out around the same time as Maia Szalavitz's excellent Unbroken Brain, and both were pivotal in my understanding of addiction as learned behavior rather than disease. It is still one of my favorite books on addiction. Lewis, a neuroscientist who has personal experience with addiction, argues that addiction isn't a disease but a developmental learning process—the brain adapts to repeated experiences through neuroplasticity, creating powerful habits that can be unlearned (Here, addiction is not a chronic, relapsing, lifelong condition, but a habit and learned behavior). He traces addiction through the brain's reward system, showing how desire becomes compulsive through reinforcement patterns, not pathology. I've read it three times and revisit it regularly; it still holds up ten years later.
9. Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction | year. 2019 | pages. 256 | author. Judith Grisel, Ph.D.
Another excellent exploration of how different drugs affect our brain and physiology. Grisel, a behavioral neuroscientist who (like Lewis) has personal experience with addiction, breaks down the science behind tolerance, dependence, and craving across various substances. She explains the opponent-process theory (how the brain's attempt to maintain balance creates the cycle where we need more of a substance to feel normal, let alone good, which I referred to multiple times in Quit Like a Woman (the A/B process)). Grisel covers alcohol, opioids, stimulants, cannabis, and psychedelics, showing how each impacts different neurotransmitter systems while following similar patterns of adaptation and withdrawal. Great for those who want to understand how drugs besides alcohol impact the brain and why addiction feels so inescapable from a neurological perspective.
10. The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity--and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race | year. 2018 | pages. 240 | author. xx
Because of bro-culture and biohacking and Hubermanshit, there’s been a growing reaction to “dopamine discourse” and lots of folks out there insisting that dopamine isn’t as important as everyone thinks it is; this is fine and good critique, but saying “dopamine is not everything” can end up sounding a lot like “dopamine is nothing”; which it is not, especially in addiction and especially for those of us with cycling hormones, neurocomplexity, and executive function impairments. This book, in particular, is a kind of sci-pop exploration of dopamine, and one of my favorite books of all time. Great for nerds.
11. Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body | year. 2018 | pages. 336 | author. xx
The best book I’ve read on how meditation impacts us; it debunks a lot of the bad science out there and overblown claims, and helps the reader truly understand how meditation can affect our well-being, and in what doses. I mention this one in case you’re looking for a balanced take and proper incentive to begin a meditation practice (I cannot sing meditation’s praises enough!). That said, this isn’t a prescriptive/how-to book: if you’re looking for a more practical book on how to start or keep a meditation practice, my favorite books are What is Zen? by Norman Fisher, and Real Kindness by Sharon Salzberg; Insight meditation has been my mainstay, and there are lots of centers and online offerings.
New Category: Neurodivergent potentially peri-menopausal targets of narcissistic abuse who have CPTSD and/or relational trauma, a chronic fawn response, and clinically significant symptoms of burnout with histories of addictive processes (or, “IYKYK!”)
These past five years—since the publication of Quit Like a Woman—have felt less like a continuation of the path I was on in 2020, and more of a second recovery for me, in which I began to understand “What was wrong with me” and my history of addiction in an entirely different light. I was diagnosed with ADHD and finally learned what it meant to be neurodivergent, and how it manifested in me in particular; entered perimenopause and a period of massive hormonal-related issues; realized I wasn't an Enneagram four but a deeply-wounded people-pleaser prone to emotional dysregulation; finally researched narcissistic abuse and realized I was a classic “target” and that entire books existed to explain my relational patterns; learned what relational trauma is!; moved out of the role of family scapegoat and “identified patient”; tried pscyhedelics and returned to using cannabis; realized I was in a near-constant state of nervous system dysregulation and thus living in a near-constant fawn response; and got burned out on recovery and fixing and healing and the constant self-analysis it required.
It’s not so much that I experienced all these things, but that over time it became highly apparent that each of these individual things was deeply interrelated.