Recommend books to stop with the alcoholism

AA isn't the only way, SMART recovery is popping up more and more. Unlike AA, SMART updates their book as science progresses and they don't try to make you feel awful like AA or make you believe in God. SMART is full of emotion managing exercises that actually bring your thoughts closer to accuracy and expose the strange ways we deceive ourselves. I think reading eastern and western philosophy can help along with lingering bits and echos of many philosophies can be heard in things like the CBA tool

oh and if I didn't make this clear they do hold meetings. They have meetings streamed live online, but there is a cap of how many can join a meeting. They also have speaker meetings on youtube where they go through tools, at least I think that's what they say but I was trashed when I watched those speeches because I was first looking into the program

Yeah, I find AA isn't all that into the big book.

One thing I notice is the book comes out and says you're not striving to become a saint, or looking to make yourself perfect, you're looking for personal improvement and to stop drinking.

So most of AA around me is boomers who've been sober for 20+ trying to make themselves perfect through AA somehow.

>they don't try to make you feel awful like AA

but you are awful, you degenerate drunkard

Yeah, all addiction is really the same.

NA uses the exact same approach, they just slightly modify some of the phrases you see.

Loving what is.
Actually book is not that great but the method is good.

Big Sur? I haven't read it yet, so I don't know. I just know it's about Kerouac's alcoholism.

I heard quite a bit of bad about SMART, that's why I never got into it.

I'm not a huge AA guy either, but in fairness AA doesn't really need to adapt their book as it's basically a philosophy, and the interpretation of that is always changing.

There's also the whole higher power, not god argument, that I won't get that into. I tell a lot of people to believe in a higher purpose, if that makes you feel better. Just a general idea that things happen for a reason, that there's actually some sort of order to things. That's enough for me.

Philosophy and books and all that did nothing at all to help my addiction though. Mainly it was just rehab, and getting a good therapist.

not a book but watch one little pill

Iboga.

There's a book called Look me in the eye about a sperg growing up and he has an alcoholic dad. You can read about how alcohol fucked up his family's upbringing and drove him to a very sad death. But most people won't be interesting in reading a book about an aspie. Still an interesting story though.

I feel like philosophy can help put things in perspective. For me philosophy helps me see how little most of the most "pressing" issues of my life matter. It helps me want to want to change while SMART provides clear concise ways to manage those emotions. It also focuses the person on how their addiction conflicts with what they want, truly understanding rather than a surface level understanding that's easy to forget. I'm half a year clean from everything and don't really miss any drugs much at all. I felt a clinging to my anger and self hate which philosophy, and to a lesser extent self help books, helped me see that it doesn't make sense to do that. SMART is focused on how to do it but I've had tons of exercises and therapists but only truly understanding how little my worries mattered helped me want to do this work. Therapy overall seems to help a little bit but therapists I've had in the past put me in a much worse place. They all told me being miserable wasn't helping but they didn't explain why my causes of misery didn't matter, the closest I'd get from multiple therapists was "things aren't going to change". I respect AA and I already regret putting it down so much in my first post. OP if you want to try AA, I just got excited about helping SMART catch on. There are many paths to recovery and I just want this option to be mentioned

Hunter S. Thompson's kid wrote a book about him, called stories i tell myself or something.

He talks a lot about his dad's alcoholism, but there's surprisingly little horrific stories. He argued with the kid's mom once, and one time when the kid broke HST's gun's sight, he made the kid carry the sight around with him everywhere to remind him how he broke the gun. That's seriously about as bad as it got.

He does describe pretty accurately what life is like for old drunks though. HST's last 10 years he was basically a cripple because of alcoholism.

Hunter S. Thompson did substances because he loved them, not really because of addiction. Not sure about alcohol tho, especially in his later years.

>Therapy overall seems to help a little bit but therapists I've had in the past put me in a much worse place

That was my problem too. I got lucky and found a really good therapist eventually though, which honestly isn't easy to do and probably not everyone even has one available to them.

Anyways, I tend to think addiction is a side effect to a much bigger problem. AA and all that stuff tends to think of addiction as the root and the cause and the effect all in one.

If you're struggling with it, i'd ask you to examine why you're doing it. What does it do for you? I guarantee it does something way more than getting you fucked up. There's a psychological need it's fulfilling. What sort of things do you do when you're fucked up? Why do you think you do them?

The problem is that the answers to all that are probably way below the surface, in your unconscious programming. I was able to figure mine out through therapy, but whatever way you need to figure it out, fucking get it done.

It is not only your responsibility, but your obligation to get your shit under control, you actually owe that to a lot of people, even though most addicts never realize this.

>Hunter S. Thompson did substances because he loved them, not really because of addiction.

Read the book....he was a flat out addict. pot and acid and all that shit was fun sure, but he was a complete alcoholic at heart.

There's a video clip of Thompson saying he had an addictive personality.

In that book they talk about how he went in for hip surgery, and was drinking in the hospital. He was only in surgery for a few hours, but even that long without alcohol was enough to put him in withdrawal, and he started getting dts and shit so they had to put him in a medically induced coma, which they weren't sure he'd wake up from. Of course, he woke up and started drinking immediately after that.

Then a few years later he had to have back surgery, so they even put alcohol in his IV this time to stop him from going into withdrawals again, but the concentration wasn't strong enough and he almost died again!

I think he killed himself a few months after that when he realized just how bad of shape he was in.

> little about alcoholic horror stories
>a decade of sputtering around the house as an invalid before killing him self

Yeah, good point user. :-)

Not memeing but infinite jest helped me get over my alcoholism

This will make you not want to touch a drink (or a book) for a long time

are you asking about lit to help with alcoholism? that is straight paradox. try bukowski.

A Million Little Pieces

Anything from Stephen King.
Also we should all turn into Alcoholics altogether.

This, I didn't realise lit was full of alcoholics