In Voicemails from My Sister, author Kate Russell explores her sister Sibby's bipolar schizoaffective disorder through true stories that illustrate the disease and how medication both helped and hindered its progress. From her mother's drug use during pregnancy, which led to an incomplete diagnosis, to Sibby's current mental status, as a 37-year-old ward of the state, Kate breaks down her sister's disease by highlighting events that contributed to the uprise and decline of her well-being.

This is a deeply personal story of a young woman’s journey through addiction; the loss of her child’s father through an overdose, her mother’s suicide, and the tragic consequences that those lifestyle choices bring. At 15, Shelley was submerged into the seedy world of the red-light district of Honolulu. As the warm-up act for the strippers, she became a topless dancer only to discover she was not emotionally prepared for the lewd attention. Pills and heroin helped her to cope with a lifestyle that was beyond her years.

After years of hiding her addiction from everyone—stockpiling pills in her Louboutins and elaborately scheduling her withdrawals between PTA meetings, baby showers, and tennis matches—Laura Cathcart Robbins is running out of places to hide. She has learned the hard way that even her high-profile marriage and Hollywood lifestyle can’t protect her from the pain she’s keeping bottled up inside. Facing divorce, the possibility of a custody battle, and the insistent voice of internalized racism that nags at her as a Black woman in a white world, Laura wonders just how much more she can take.

Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction." She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income. In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail.

This deeply personal and illuminating memoir about her 15-year struggle with heroin, Khar sheds profound light on the opioid crisis and gives a voice to the over two million people in America currently battling with this addiction. Growing up in LA, Erin Khar hid behind a picture-perfect childhood filled with excellent grades, a popular group of friends and horseback riding. After first experimenting with her grandmother’s expired painkillers, Khar started using heroin when she was thirteen.

With heart-racing urgency and unflinching honesty, Jenkins takes you inside the grips of addiction and the desperate decisions it breeds. She is a born storyteller who lived an incredible story, from blackmail by an ex-boyfriend to a soul-shattering deal with a drug dealer, and her telling brims with suspense and unexpected wit. But the true surprise is her path to recovery. Tiffany breaks through the stigma and silence to offer hope and inspiration to anyone battling the disease - whether it’s a loved one or themselves.

That's What Junkies Do is a brutally honest, often dark journey of one man's struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction. The story starts innocently enough in 1980's Brooklyn, NY, with a young boy, Thomas Figlioli, making a bad choice so he could gain the respect of a group of kids he looked up to and admired. Alcohol gives him the courage to be the person he always wanted to be. His fear and insecurity leaves and his lifelong struggle begins. When thoughts of ending it all become a better choice than living how he is, Thomas finally asks for help.

At the age of 24, Jordan Barnes woke up next to a lifeless body, rifled through his dead friends’ pockets for any remaining heroin, and went right back to using. Strung out and homeless during the supposed best years of his life, there was no clear way out of the opioid crisis ravaging the streets of Portland, Oregon. But though Jordan had long accepted his fate, his parents still held out hope and would do everything in their power to get him the help he so desperately needed.

This is a true story. A transparent story of the life of a young man in America, who, like many of our lost youth, found his way into the drug culture. This story is an autopsy into the mind, heart, and soul of an addict. It begins at childhood and takes us through the thoughts, turmoil, and inner conflicts of a person lost in the undercurrent of addiction, and ends in a climax of self-discovery and realization. It is a gripping tale of a suburban youth and his journey through the streets of Baltimore, institutions, prisons, addiction, and worst of all, his own mind.

My mother was bipolar, mentally ill, a sociopath that not only got pregnant by my 15-year-old father but went on to abuse me in every way imaginable. This is my story. People have a hard time believing that women, especially mothers who are supposed to protect their children, can be molesters and pedophiles, but my mother was one. I am not only telling my story for my own recovery, exposing the sins of the mothers in our family, but to help others to see that if this happened to them, they are not alone, and they can recover and have healthy, reasonably happy lives.

Something was wrong with Peter. Eilene Zimmerman noticed that her ex-husband looked thin, seemed distracted, and was frequently absent from activities with their children. Yet in many ways, Peter seemed to have it all. So begins Smacked, a brilliant and moving memoir of Eilene’s shocking discovery, one that sets her on a journey to find out how a man she knew for nearly 30 years became a drug addict, hiding it so well that neither she nor anyone else in his life suspected what was happening.

When a car crash sidelines Mickey just before softball season, she has to find a way to hold on to her spot as the catcher for a team expected to make a historic tournament run. Behind the plate is the only place she’s ever felt comfortable, and the painkillers she’s been prescribed can help her get there. The pills do more than take away pain; they make her feel good. But as the pressure to be Mickey Catalan heightens, her need increases, and it becomes less about pain and more about want, something that could send her spiraling out of control.

Leaving behind a nightmarish college experience, 19-year-old Nicole and her best friend Eric escape their home of Bangor, Maine to start a new life in Boston. Fragile and scared, Nicole desperately seeks a new beginning to help erase her past. But there is something besides freedom waiting for her in the shadows - a drug that will make every day a nightmare.

Bryony Gordon is a respected journalist, a number one best-selling author and an award-winning mental health campaigner. She is also an alcoholic. In Glorious Rock Bottom Bryony opens up about a toxic 20-year relationship with alcohol and drugs and explains exactly why hitting rock bottom - for her, a traumatic event and the abrupt realisation that she was putting herself in danger, time and again - saved her life.

Fans know her as the spoiled, rich cheerleader Lyla Garrity on Friday Night Lights or as the affluent, mysterious Samantha on the HBO megahit Euphoria. But as revealed for the first time in this book, Minka Kelly’s life has been anything but easy. Raised by a single mother who worked as a stripper and struggled with addiction, Minka spent years waking up in strange apartments as she and her mom bounced around the country, relying on friends and relatives to take them in. Now an established actress and philanthropist, Minka takes this next step in her career as a writer.

When she was 7, Rayya Elias and her family fled the political conflict in their native Syria, settling in Detroit. Bullied in school and caught between the world of her traditional family and her tough American classmates, she rebelled early. Elias moved to New York City to become a musician and kept herself afloat with an uncommon talent for cutting hair. At the height of the punk movement, life on the Lower East Side was full of adventure, creative inspiration, and temptation.

Bobi Conn was raised in a remote Kentucky holler in 1980s Appalachia. She remembers her tin-roofed house tucked away in a vast forest paradise; the sparkling creeks, with their frogs and crawdads; the sweet blackberries growing along the road to her granny’s; and her abusive father. An elegiac account of survival despite being born poor, female, and cloistered, Bobi’s testament is one of hope for all vulnerable populations, particularly women and girls caught in the cycle of poverty and abuse.

Striking in their emotional immediacy, the stories in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self are based in a world where inequality is reality but where the insecurities of adolescence and young adulthood, and the tensions within family and the community, are sometimes the biggest complicating forces in one's sense of identity and the choices one makes.

In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens off the conventional course. Like the 10 Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another: violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning - even cancer and a brain tumor - play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal.

In this candid autobiography, Cherie Currie - the original lead singer of '70s teenage all-girl rock band The Runaways - powerfully recounts her years in the band, her friendship with guitarist Joan Jett, and her struggle with drugs. An intense, behind-the-scenes look at rock music in the gritty, post-glam era, Neon Angel is a must-listen for anyone whose heart beats to the rhythm of David Bowie, Suzi Quatro, Nick Gilder, and the Sex Pistols, and for every fan of the movie it inspired: The Runaways, starring Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart as Cherie Currie and Joan Jett.

Scars and Stilettos: At 13, after being abandoned by her mother one summer and left to take care of her younger brother, Harmony becomes susceptible to a relationship that turns out to be toxic, abusive, and ultimately exploitative. She eventually finds herself working in a strip club at the age of 19, and her boyfriend becomes her pimp, controlling her every move and taking all of her money. Ultimately, she discovers a path to freedom and a whole new life.

On screen, Danny Trejo the actor is a baddie who has been killed at least a hundred times. He’s been shot, stabbed, hanged, chopped up, squished by an elevator, and once, was even melted into a bloody goo. Off screen, he’s a hero beloved by recovery communities and obsessed fans alike. But the real Danny Trejo is much more complicated than the legend.

Growing up abandoned by her father and raised by a single mother, Celeste was determined to create the perfect family - but even perfect families have secrets. Her days are filled with a rewarding career, a devoted husband, and her four-year-old daughter. Celeste is the only one who knows the precarious house of cards her family is built upon - until the day her daughter falls critically ill. Then her world quickly spirals out of control, her secret threatening to destroy her marriage, family, reputation, and sanity.

A struggling writer must come to terms with her past, present, and future after she discovers that she's the inspiration for a pseudonymously published best-selling novel.

Azu Wilson gave his oldest daughter the name Snow because she was born amongst his snowfall on the city of Gary, Indiana in 2001. Then, Azu had just began to drop tons kilos of coke on the city, starting the birth of his empire. Fast forward 18 years later, Snow is Azu's favorite girl and only daughter. She has been doted on by her father. Now, she is off to college with her best friends, Tristan and Bae. They hope that their move out of the violent streets of Chicago to Tallahassee will bring positive change to the brutally savage lives they have lived.

After years of hiding her addiction from everyone—stockpiling pills in her Louboutins and elaborately scheduling her withdrawals between PTA meetings, baby showers, and tennis matches—Laura Cathcart Robbins is running out of places to hide. She has learned the hard way that even her high-profile marriage and Hollywood lifestyle can’t protect her from the pain she’s keeping bottled up inside. Facing divorce, the possibility of a custody battle, and the insistent voice of internalized racism that nags at her as a Black woman in a white world, Laura wonders just how much more she can take.

This is a deeply personal story of a young woman’s journey through addiction; the loss of her child’s father through an overdose, her mother’s suicide, and the tragic consequences that those lifestyle choices bring. At 15, Shelley was submerged into the seedy world of the red-light district of Honolulu. As the warm-up act for the strippers, she became a topless dancer only to discover she was not emotionally prepared for the lewd attention. Pills and heroin helped her to cope with a lifestyle that was beyond her years.

This deeply personal and illuminating memoir about her 15-year struggle with heroin, Khar sheds profound light on the opioid crisis and gives a voice to the over two million people in America currently battling with this addiction. Growing up in LA, Erin Khar hid behind a picture-perfect childhood filled with excellent grades, a popular group of friends and horseback riding. After first experimenting with her grandmother’s expired painkillers, Khar started using heroin when she was thirteen.

In the tradition of Orange Is the New Black and Jerry Stahl's Permanent Midnight, Amy Dresner's My Fair Junkie is an insightful, darkly funny, and shamelessly honest memoir of one woman's battle with all forms of addiction, hitting rock bottom, and forging a path to a life worth living.

With heart-racing urgency and unflinching honesty, Jenkins takes you inside the grips of addiction and the desperate decisions it breeds. She is a born storyteller who lived an incredible story, from blackmail by an ex-boyfriend to a soul-shattering deal with a drug dealer, and her telling brims with suspense and unexpected wit. But the true surprise is her path to recovery. Tiffany breaks through the stigma and silence to offer hope and inspiration to anyone battling the disease - whether it’s a loved one or themselves.

That's What Junkies Do is a brutally honest, often dark journey of one man's struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction. The story starts innocently enough in 1980's Brooklyn, NY, with a young boy, Thomas Figlioli, making a bad choice so he could gain the respect of a group of kids he looked up to and admired. Alcohol gives him the courage to be the person he always wanted to be. His fear and insecurity leaves and his lifelong struggle begins. When thoughts of ending it all become a better choice than living how he is, Thomas finally asks for help.

Vince Granata remembers standing in front of his suburban home in Connecticut the day his mother and father returned from the hospital with his three new siblings in tow. He had just finished scrawling their names in orange chalk on the driveway: Christopher, Timothy, and Elizabeth. Twenty-three years later, Vince was a thousand miles away when he received the news that would change his life - his younger brother, Tim, propelled by unchecked schizophrenia, had killed their mother in their childhood home.

In this powerful true crime memoir, an award-winning identity theft expert tells the shocking story of the duplicity and betrayal that inspired her career and nearly destroyed her family. Axton Betz-Hamilton grew up in small-town Indiana in the early '90s. When she was 11 years old, her parents both had their identities stolen. Their credit ratings were ruined, and they were constantly fighting over money. This was before the age of the Internet, when identity theft became more commonplace, so authorities and banks were clueless and reluctant to help Axton's parents.

From an early age, Amber van de Bunt knew she wasn't like the other girls in town. From childhood struggles with depression and eating disorders, her years as a topless dancer in Florida, and an eventual abortion and suicide attempt, to her rebirth in Los Angeles as a porn star named Karmen Karma, overcoming her relationship with her abusive mother, and her struggle to maintain a clean and sober lifestyle - van de Bunt's life has been a roller coaster. With humor, alacrity, and profound insight, she reveals her deepest, darkest secrets and pulls no punches - least of all with herself.

While his wife and two-year-old daughter watched TV in the living room, David Poses was in the kitchen, measuring the distance from his index finger to his armpit. He needed to be sure he could pull the trigger with a shotgun barrel in his mouth. Twenty-six inches. Thirty-two years old. More than a decade in a double life fueled by depression and heroin.

At the age of 24, Jordan Barnes woke up next to a lifeless body, rifled through his dead friends’ pockets for any remaining heroin, and went right back to using. Strung out and homeless during the supposed best years of his life, there was no clear way out of the opioid crisis ravaging the streets of Portland, Oregon. But though Jordan had long accepted his fate, his parents still held out hope and would do everything in their power to get him the help he so desperately needed.

After Jason’s world falls apart in LA, he moves to Berkeley for a fresh start with his kid brother. Just one problem: his long-closeted Adderall addiction has exploded into an out-of-control crystal meth binge. Within weeks, Jason plunges into the sprawling ParTy n’ ’Play subculture of the Bay Area’s gay community. It is a wildly decadent scene of drugs, group sex, and criminals, and yet it is also filled with surprising characters, people who are continually subverting Jason’s own presumptions of the stereotypical tweaker.

Lisa Smith was a bright young lawyer at a prestigious law firm in New York City when alcoholism and drug addiction took over her life. What was once a way she escaped her insecurity and negativity as a teenager became a means of coping with the anxiety and stress of an impossible workload. Girl Walks Out of a Bar explores Smith's formative years, her decade of alcohol and drug abuse, divorce, and her road to recovery.

My name is Brett. I'm a college-educated man who was once a husband of 26 years with two children, three businesses, and a large home with an actual white picket fence. I'm also a drug addict. And I have a tale to tell. It's about the despair of addiction and the absolute certainty that it can be overcome. Recovery is not simply abstinence, but a process of growing up. I spent my entire life searching for the key to long-term sobriety. I would like to share with you what I have learned.

Leaving behind a nightmarish college experience, 19-year-old Nicole and her best friend Eric escape their home of Bangor, Maine to start a new life in Boston. Fragile and scared, Nicole desperately seeks a new beginning to help erase her past. But there is something besides freedom waiting for her in the shadows - a drug that will make every day a nightmare.