Showing results for "Alcohol" in Biographies & Memoirs

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. 

The Sober Survival Guide is a unique quit-alcohol book and is split into two parts. The first is designed to set you up for success and put you in a place where you can find freedom from alcohol. The first part of the book contains essential information for when you're in the early stages of controlling your drinking. The second part serves as a handbook as you move forward into an alcohol-free life. 

We live in a world obsessed with drinking. We drink at work events, lunches, book clubs and weddings. Yet no one ever questions alcohol's ubiquity. In fact, the only thing ever questions is why people don't drink. It is a qualifier for belonging. As a society, we are obsessed with health and wellness, yet we uphold alcohol as some sort of magic elixir. It is anything but. When Holly Whitaker started to look for a way to recover, the support systems she found for recovery where archaic and patriarchal. 

Louisa first met Robert Lockhart when they were both 17. Their stop-start romance lasted decades, in which time he became a celebrated composer and she an acclaimed novelist. Always snapping at their heels was Robert’s alcoholism, a helpless, ferocious dependency that affected his personality before crippling and finally, despite five years of hard-won sobriety, killing him. There are a million love stories and a million stories of addiction. This one is truly transcendent.

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.

After two decades of mental, emotional, and physical afflictions, J. T. Wahlberg had had enough, and he was all set to end his 20-year addiction to alcohol. There was just one problem: He “forgot” to research the potential risks of detoxing on his own without any medical supervision. Armed with cans of Campbell’s Chunky soup, plenty of water, and a few tips he had picked up from the movie Trainspotting, he hunkered down in his apartment for what he imagined would be a couple of days of pain followed by a life of sunny sobriety.

Could happiness lie in helping others and being open to accepting help yourself? Mentors: How to Help and Be Helped describes the impact that a series of significant people have had on the author - from the wayward youths he tried to emulate growing up in Essex, through the first ex-junkie sage, to the people he turns to today to help him be a better father. It explores how we all - consciously and unconsciously - choose guides, mentors and heroes throughout our lives and examines the new perspectives they can bring.

The new face of risky drinking is female. The problem: a global epidemic of bingeing. The solution: a brave new approach to female recovery. Eight years ago, Ann Dowsett Johnston was an award-winning journalist and vice-principal of McGill University. In private, she was wrestling the demon that had undone her own mother; the same demon increasing numbers of women are now battling across the world: alcohol.

Narrated by Stephen Hogan and introduced by Roy Keane. In an 18-year playing career for Cobh Ramblers, Nottingham Forest, and Manchester United (under Sir Alex Ferguson) and Celtic, Roy Keane dominated every midfield he led to glory. Aggressive and highly competitive, his attitude helped him to excel as captain of Manchester United from 1997 until his departure in 2005.

Perhaps the most unconventional and literally breathtaking father-son story you'll ever read, My Friend Leonard pulls you immediately and deeply into a relationship as unusual as it is inspiring. The father figure is Leonard, the high-living, recovering coke addict, "West Coast Director of a large Italian-American finance firm" (read: mobster) who helped to keep James Frey clean in A Million Little Pieces.

At the height of his initial, turn-of-the-1990's infamy as the maraca-wielding dancer with 'Madchester' giants Happy Mondays, the pop-eyed Mark Berry, forever known to the world as Bez, was visibly a danger to society. He became the so-called Chemical Generation's bug-eyed pied piper, every weekend leading millions out to oblivion and beyond, as they adopted his E-gobbling party lifestyle.

Journalist Jenny Valentish investigates the female experience of drugs and alcohol, using her own story to light the way. Mining the expertise of leading researchers, she explores the early predictors of addiction, such as childhood trauma and temperament, and teenage impulsivity. Drawing on neuroscience, she explains why other self-destructive behaviours - such as eating disorders and high-risk sex - are interchangeable with substance use.

Craig Beck is a well-regarded family man with two children, a lovely home and a successful media career; a director of several companies, and at one time the trustee of a large children's charity, Craig was a successful and functioning professional man in spite of a 'two 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 did not think he met the stereotypical image that the word portrayed.

The first story Selma Blair Beitner ever heard about herself is that she was a mean, mean baby. With her mouth pulled in a perpetual snarl and a head so furry it had to be rubbed to make way for her forehead, Selma spent years living up to her terrible reputation: biting her sisters, lying spontaneously, getting drunk from Passover wine at the age of seven and behaving dramatically so that she would be the centre of attention. 

Between 1994 and 1997, James Brown's loaded magazine became the the must-buy and must-be-in publication of the decade. It won every award going, year after year, and came to define not only its audience but also a generation. Bright, loud, funny, provocative, ambitious and careless, loaded was read from the barracks of Afghanistan to the England dressing room at Euro '96. It captured a hedonistic lifestyle of alcohol, cocaine and more. The last great hurrah before the end of the century. 

When Stefanie Wilder-Taylor became a mother, being able to connect with other moms over drinks or enjoy a glass of wine at the end of a stressful day felt life-affirming. From liquor cabinet concoctions in high school to tequila shots in her early stand-up comedy days to grocery store wine in young motherhood, alcohol was the seasoning that could give almost any activity more flavor. A drink instantly took the edge off and made even the most difficult adversary (be it a tough crowd in a comedy club or a judgmental PTA mom) not just bearable but fun.

When Rain Hurts is the story of one mother’s quest to find a magical path of healing and forgiveness for her son, a boy so damaged by the double whammy of prenatal alcohol abuse and the stark rigors of Russian orphanage life that he was feral by the time of his adoption at age three. Bizarre behaviors, irrational thoughts, and dangerous preoccupations were the norm - no amount of love, it turns out, can untangle the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome.

This could be the story of any man, his life driven and guided for half a century by his overwhelming desire for alcohol. This book relates a candid and informative account of an alcoholic’s life and where it leads. It also offers suggestions of reasons for alcoholism, the effects that alcohol has upon the brain, an examination of the law relating to mental capacity, and an ultimately heartfelt plea to anyone instrumental in changing the lives for such unfortunate individuals, to examine more closely the research available.

This podcast series shares community empowerment experiences from peer supporters working with Turning Point Scotland in Aberdeenshire helping communities dealing with alcohol and drug problems. Practitioners and peer support workers share how they have used their personal experiences to help at-risk groups supporting recovery from addiction through processes of connection and compassion. Communities play critical roles in public health. The active participation of communities in health services has long been recognised as a pro-equity approach enhancing legitimacy and acceptability of ...

Miriam tried for most of her life to hide her mental illness. She hoped that if she pretended it didn't exist, nobody else would notice it either. That didn't happen. Unexplainable rage attacks, persistent intrusive thoughts and a recurring overwhelming despair are difficult to hide. Working as an x-ray technologist through Covid-19 contributed to her declining mental health. In a desperate attempt to numb the pain and cheer herself up she reached for what society endorses as the ultimate relaxant: wine.