Addiction & Recovery

Hannah Proctor prescribes a healthy dose of criticism for psychoanalytic or psychiatric approaches that fail to grasp how it feels to struggle for a better world — especially struggles that end in defeat, disillusionment, and exhaustion. Meditating on trauma, anxiety, mourning, and rage, Proctor draws from the diverse ways that activists and revolutionaries have confronted the emotional impacts of their...

The Sunday Times bestseller with all the strategies you need to prevent pain and fuel your body to its fullest health potential. ‘James is incredible – he has played a huge role in helping me manage my fitness and recover from injury over the years’ David Beckham Stress, anxiety, injury, everyday wear and tear. Life takes its toll on our...

This book is about addictions of all kinds. Addictions to smartphones, sex, games, social media, gambling, money, but most of all to alcohol and drugs. The words 'addict' and 'addiction' are loaded with baggage. Not just in Australia, but the world over, addicts are considered to be sub-human, if not alien. Addicted? aims to reclaim their dignity. It aims to...

A radical new approach to tackling anxiety, depression, and purposelessness through connection, spirituality, and transcendence from international bestselling author of Dopamine Nation, Dr Anna Lembke. Using her personal story of deep loss and subsequent spiritual awakening as a powerful entry point, Dr Anna Lembke opens the door to a vitally important aspect of life that has been badly neglected in...

Increasing bacterial resistance to antibiotics is one of today's greatest threats to public health. Yet a possible solution has emerged from a surprising source. Phage therapy deploys viruses called bacteriophages, "bacteria eaters," to treat bacterial infections. What concerns—both biological and social—arise from using viruses in this way? What does phage therapy reveal about the links between humans and microbes? In...

Continuity of Care for Forcibly Displaced Persons Living with Chronic Illness delves into the unique challenges faced by those who are forcibly displaced and living with chronic health conditions. This book utilizes evidence from inclusive health services to identify and conceptualise the essential elements of a healthcare service that is attuned to the specific needs of displaced individuals.

Our ancestors didn’t just take the piss… They used it too. The human body leaks. It oozes. It sweats and spits. It bursts, it bleeds and it squirts. Over the history of humanity, our bodies have evolved into sophisticated vessels for survival, leaving a long trail of fluids in our wake. Whether we’re coughing it up or swallowing it down,...

‘A practical and accessible guide to chronic illness. Essential reading’ – Dr Claire AshleyYour one-stop resource for navigating the world with a chronic illness Living with a chronic illness is exhausting. From deciding how to manage your limited energy to the isolation that comes from finding ‘easy’ tasks – such as running errands or taking a shower – nearly impossible,...

A psychiatrist looks beneath the surface of mental health and neurodiversity in the wider political and cultural context and explores how we might reconsider the way in which we think about, treat and care for those in distress A Sunday Times Best Book of 2025 More and more people are being diagnosed with ADHD and autism. More and more people...

Your health isn't just your problem, it's everyone's Have you ever questioned why, despite the avalanche of self-help books and optimization hacks, we remain embroiled in multiple global health crises? Populations worldwide are gaining life-shortening excess weight (even in poorer countries), and water contamination is rampant (even in richer countries). In such dire circumstances, a gratitude journal won't help. The...

In a vivid, tender and uncompromising novel of male violence and destruction, once-in-a-generation writer Édouard Louis looks back on the life and death of his deeply troubled older brother. Édouard's brother spends much of his life dreaming. He lives in a poor, working-class world, where he imagines that he will become one of the finest butchers in France, that he...

Not long ago, if you were ill, you’d see a doctor. Now, you go online. Want to track your blood sugar? Your heart rate? Your sleep? You can. Need to focus? Want to lose weight fast? Everything is a click away. But who, if anyone, is regulating this? As NHS waiting times grow ever longer and patients in the US...

Taut, lyrical and utterly gripping – a headrush of a debut novel about four boys coming of age on the deprived outskirts of Oslo. Last night I got woke up by Marco ringing, and he was crying, he said, he died Ivor, he died, and I didn’t need to hear who to know, I just hung up. Ivor and Marco...

AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025 AN OPRAH WINFREY AND FEARNE COTTON BOOK CLUB PICK 'No one who reads this book will ever forget it' - Meg Mason 'An absolute masterclass and truth-bomb … I think many people will be shaken awake by this book' - Emma Gannon In her first non-fiction book in a decade, the no. 1...

A groundbreaking new approach to treating anxiety as an addiction, from one of the UK's foremost mental health experts. Anxiety is a normal and sometimes healthy process, but in a world that feels increasingly unsafe and unpredictable, many of us find ourselves in its grip far more than is comfortable or truly necessary. If you subconsciously believe that worrying or...

John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world's deadliest disease. Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticised as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is seen as a disease of poverty that walks the trails of...

A revolutionary 8-step approach to transforming your relationship with any negative habit or unhealthy pattern. 'This book offers a promising pathway of self-liberation for many people trapped in the distressing and hazardous liminal space between occasional alcohol use and full-blown addiction, developed by one who has pioneered this road for herself.' - GABOR MATÉ, New York Times bestselling author 'A...

Break the habit of a lifetime and never smoke a cigarette again. Following the enormous success of his bestselling Easy Way to Stop Smoking, Allen Carr provides smokers with the motivation to break free from addiction forever. This book will help you: Achieve the right frame of mind to quit Avoid weight gain Quit without dependence on rules or gimmicks...

"Sharon Hartley's down-to-earth attitude, Lancashire positivity and big warm heart always puts a smile on my face and cheer in my soul" - Ruth Jones, actress, comedian, writer and producer. After years of drinking too much, too fast and too often, much-loved BBC presenter Sharon Hartley decided that she needed to make some changes, starting with giving up alcohol. People...

Let go of negativity, rediscover your inherent worth, and unlock your true potential. How to Breathe While Suffocating is your antidote to the all-too-common tendency to surrender, giving up on your life’s ambitions. You don’t have to give up! For anyone who has gotten caught in the trap of “I can’t do it,” this book reminds you that you are...

How did Big Gambling become too big to fail and too powerful to adequately regulate? Australians lose around $32 billion on legal forms of gambling each year, the most of any country in the world, while the industry rakes in $244 billion through poker machines, lotteries, casinos, and the exponential rise in sports betting. In Hooked, Quentin Beresford explores how...

Feeling sober-curious? Got a dry challenge coming up? Dry lifestyle expert Hilary Sheinbaum has your back with this handy workbook of prompts and exercises to help you drink less and live more. As featured in The New York Times In a world filled with booze, it's hard to be a non-drinker. Yet more and more people every day are setting...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ILP JOHN CREASEY NEW BLOOD DAGGER 2024 'Doesn't so much break the fourth wall as crash through it in a bulldozer' Guardian 'Engrossing, surprising, clever, genre bending' Val McDermid 'Highly compulsive reading' Alex Pavesi 'Well I have no idea how this ended and need someone to talk to about it!' Rachel S, bookseller You. Yes, you, reading...

When he received an SOS from a friend kidnapped in a dark corner of Asia, journalist Conor Woodman began a journey that would lead him to the most dangerous and least understood place on earth: Wa State, a lawless enclave of Myanmar that neither the government nor the army dare to enter, and a hotbed of vice and corruption. Conor...

Saltburn meets The Secret History in this gripping tale of alchemy and academia. IAN RANKIN THE WATERSTONES SCOTTISH BOOK OF THE MONTH FOR MAY 2025 Five friends. One deadly obsession. The salt-scented quadrangles of St Andrews University greet misfit first-year student Finn Nethercott with indifference. This is a place where only privilege counts, and those from the right backgrounds can...

Towards Inclusive Social Policies? focuses on both the attitudinal and institutional repercussions of the pandemic, while transcending Western-centric narratives and study cases. This book asks the question: has the COVID-19 pandemic facilitated the adoption of more generous and inclusive social policies in Southeast Asia?

Amid historic restrictions on abortion, puberty blockers, and assisted suicide, a health-law expert exposes America's broken system of medical conscience, which shields clinicians who refuse evidence-based care yet offers no protections to those who provide prohibited treatment. Pitched battles over abortion, puberty blockers, and assisted suicide have turned American healthcare into a legal minefield. Faced with mounting restrictions on medical...

A moving cultural history of disability—and a powerful call to action to change how our medical system and society supports those with complex chronic conditions. From lupus to Lyme, invisible illness is often dismissed by everyone but the sufferers. Why does the medical establishment continually insist that, when symptoms are hard to explain, they are probably just in your head?...

As seen on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS Forget the world that came before. The author of American Vertigo serves up an incisive look at how COVID-19 reveals the dangerous fault lines of contemporary society. With medical mysteries, rising death tolls, and conspiracy theories beamed minute by minute through the vast web universe, the coronavirus pandemic has irrevocably altered societies around...

A provocative book arguing that the workplace is where we learn to live democratically. In The Pandemic Workplace, anthropologist Ilana Gershon turns her attention to the US workplace and how it changed—and changed us—during the pandemic. She argues that the unprecedented organisational challenges of the pandemic forced us to radically reexamine our attitudes about work and to think more deeply...

Blocking out, turning a blind eye, shutting off, not wanting to know, wearing blinkers, seeing what we want to see... these are all expressions of 'denial'. Alcoholics who refuse to recognise their condition, people who brush aside suspicions of their partner's infidelity, the wife who doesn't notice that her husband is abusing their daughter - are supposedly 'in denial'. Governments...

The Cold War reconsidered as a limited nuclear war “Inexorable clarity and care for his fellow humans mark Robert Jacobs's guide to the Cold War as a limited nuclear war, whose harms disfigure any possible future.”—Norma Field, author of In the Realm of a Dying Emperor: Japan at Century’s End In the autumn of 1961, President Kennedy somberly warned Americans...

For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In Nobody's Normal, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma—from the eighteenth century, through America's major wars, and into today's high-tech economy. Nobody's Normal argues that stigma is a social process that can be explained...

An international cultural history of the multifunctional plant. Cannabis explores the historical, pharmacological, and cultural significance of the controversial plant. Beginning with its origins as a food source in Southeast Asia, Borougerdi describes the global evolution of cannabis over the centuries, with a particular focus on its spread across the Atlantic and its modern renaissance in cuisine. The book also...

Across American history, the question of whose lives are long and healthy and whose lives are short and sick has always been shaped by the social and economic order. From the dispossession of Indigenous people and the horrors of slavery to infectious diseases spreading in overcrowded tenements and the vast environmental contamination caused by industrialisation, and through climate change and...

The story that inspired the major motion picture Beautiful Boy featuring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet. This New York Times bestselling memoir of a young man’s addiction to methamphetamine tells a raw, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful tale of the road from relapse to recovery.Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age eleven. In the years that followed, he...

Twelve-year-old Claire Barton doesn't like the "flutter feeling" that fills her chest when she worries about the future, but she knows what she loves: the land that's been in her family for three generations; her best friend Maya; her family's horses, Sunny and Sam; and her older brother Andy. That's why, with Andy recently sent to rehab and her parents...

Squirrel is prepared to sell everything he has for The Really Beautiful Thing, but at what cost? A cautionary tale with a heartwarming ending about the force of greed and the power of friendship and family.Squirrel isn’t sure what The Really Beautiful Thing is – or even what it does – all he knows is that he wants it. When...

In a melancholic city of towering skyscrapers, bombarding billboards and blinding screens, resides a dopamine addicted society. The hustle and bustle of day precedes the lonely isolation of night, as they return, alone, to soulless utilitarian apartments where screens consume their remaining waking hours. Spiralling further into depression and anxiety, consuming more but never being nourished, one Man falls into...

Age range 12 to 18 In Peer Pressure for Teens, young writers demonstrate that it's possible to stand up to the pressure they may feel from friends and some family members to be "cool." Inspire teen and preteen readers to take responsibility for and make wiser decisions about their lives with the essays in this book—each written by a teenager....

Rewiring the Addicted Brain with EMDR-Based Treatment explores the application of attachment-focused EMDR and resource tapping to the clinical challenge of addictions recovery. Writing for both EMDR therapists and substance abuse counsellors, Laurel Parnell provides user-friendly tools to help support clients in recovery. The EMDR-based techniques presented can be easily integrated into all levels of addiction treatment. The book emphasizes...

In Why We Drink Too Much, Dr. Charles Knowles tackles the complex relationship we have with alcohol, blending the latest scientific findings with historical anecdotes and his own personal insights. It's a journey through time, exploring how alcohol has shaped our history, our celebrations and, for some, our struggles. Knowles breaks down the science of why we drink, from the...

A breathtakingly candid memoir by Joanna 'JoJo' Levesque, the chart-topping, multi-platinum recording artist behind hits like 'Leave (Get Out)', 'Too Little, Too Late', and the Grammy Award-winning 'Say So'. Signed to a major recording deal at just twelve years old, JoJo catapulted to the top of the pop-and-R&B-infused charts in the mid-2000s. The relatability of her youth and the appeal...

There is general agreement about the need to criminalise the production, sale, and possession of certain drugs, yet the costly international apparatus surrounding this is failing. But why do we criminalise some substances and not others? Is the purpose misguided, or the methods, or both? Julia Buxton looks at how our current drug control regime came about from the first...

The new edition of this popular introduction takes seriously the idea that health outcomes can be fully understood only by investigating the role the social world plays in our health. Ratcliff and Axtell-Thompson put into practice the “upstream” imagery championed by public health experts, locating the causes of health problems – and their solutions – within the social environment. Each...

Sociologist Neil Gong explains why mental health treatment in Los Angeles rarely succeeds, for the rich, the poor, and everyone in between. In 2022, Los Angeles became the US county with the largest population of unhoused people, drawing a stark contrast with the wealth on display in its opulent neighbourhoods. In Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics, sociologist Neil Gong traces...

How vaccines became the world's most powerful and widely distributed health intervention, and the inside story of the challenging race to deliver COVID-19 vaccines globally. Fair Doses is a story of vaccines: how they came about, why they are important, and how they have been made globally available—although our quest for vaccine equity is still ongoing. In this fascinating deep...

With full legalisation seeming inevitable, it's time to shift the conversation—from whether recreational cannabis should be legalised to how. Weed Rules argues that it's time for states to abandon their "grudging tolerance" approach to legal weed and to embrace "careful exuberance." In this thorough and witty book, law professor Jay Wexler invites policymakers to responsibly embrace the enormous benefits of...

Stop smoking. Stop vaping. Start living. We’ve been sold a lie: that smoking and vaping help us relax. This Naked Mind: Nicotine exposes the truth – nicotine doesn’t relieve stress, it creates it. From the authors who helped thousands overcome problem drinking, Annie Grace and William Porter now bring their proven, science-backed approach to quitting nicotine. With clear strategies and...

Ruby Warrington's 2019 book Sober Curious was an illuminating conversation-starter that asked her readers to consider, 'Would life be better without alcohol?' Thus, it sparked a global wellness trend of 'curiosity' on how to gain one's genuine confidence and happiness without the crutch of alcohol. In The Sober Curious Reset, Ruby goes a step further by inviting her readers into...

A psychiatrist looks beneath the surface of mental health and neurodiversity in the wider political and cultural context and explores how we might reconsider the way in which we think about, treat, and care for those in distress. More and more people are being diagnosed with ADHD and autism. More and more people are being diagnosed with mental disorders. Young...

This revised and expanded third edition of the gold-standard for intervention provides clear steps for harnessing the power of family, friends, and professionals to create a better future with loved ones suffering from addiction. Over the course of the last twenty years, Love First has become the go-to intervention guide for tens of thousands of families. This trailblazing book empowers...

This second edition of the groundbreaking book by acclaimed interventionist and educator Debra Jay celebrates the unique and powerful role families play in successful long-term recovery from addiction. Readers receive tips, tools, and a framework for pursuing the proven path of Structured Family Recovery. As a companion to Love First, the classic guide to family intervention, It Takes a Family...

Get empowered to change your relationship with alcohol—without feeling deprived From leading recovery mentors Lane Kennedy and Tamar Medford, this book is full of proven ideas that will help you embrace a life without alcohol (or without so much of it). Chock full of personal stories, unfiltered honesty, and tried-and-true advice, Sobriety For Dummies offers practical strategies and useful tools...

A guide to the benefits and challenges of the use of cannabis in spiritual practice. Includes chapters by 18 authoritative and influential voices of the modern cannabis movement, including Kathleen Harrison, Joan Bello, Hamilton Souther, Steven Hager, Chris Bennett, Dee Dussault, Jeremy Wolff, and Roger Christie. Explores the use of marijuana in a wide range of spiritual practices, including meditation,...

The goal isn't to be sober. The goal is to love yourself so much you don't need to drink. For decades we have been sold the idea that alcohol is our 'reward' at the end of a busy day. We use it to celebrate and commiserate, for self-care and socialising, and to relieve the stress of the daily grind. But...

A guidebook to beating internet addiction and screen overuse for living a fuller life There’s no escaping it—we live in a digital world. We work, play, socialise, and learn online, and the Internet provides many amazing opportunities. Unfortunately, because of our basic biology, we’re all susceptible to overuse and addiction to screens. Video games, social media, porn, and even scrolling...

Your trusted guide to value yourself and break the patterns of codependency Codependency For Dummies, 2nd Edition is the most comprehensive book on the topic to date. Written in plain English and packed with sensitive, authoritative information, it describes the history, symptoms, causes, and relationship dynamics of codependency. The majority of the book is devoted to healing and lays out...

No matter what your road to recovery looks like, Dummies is on your side. Addiction & Recovery For Dummies gives you the tools you need to identify and face addiction in yourself or a loved one while working towards a healthy and realistic approach to recovery. This book offers a compassionate, unbiased, and non-judgmental guide to evaluating and overcoming addiction....

Half Broke is an intensely moving memoir about training a herd of horses at an alternative prison ranch. It explores stories of trauma, addiction, recovery, and the fascinating ways humans and animals communicate and form a lasting bond.

The story of the circle of scientists, poets and dissidents who discovered laughing gas—and forever changed our understanding of the mind An unlikely circle of doctors, chemists, poets and political radicals formed a group round the maverick physician Thomas Beddoes. In the closing years of the eighteenth century, he founded the first modern medical institute, the Pneumatic Institute in Bristol....

The first critical analysis of how Whiteness drove the opioid crisis. In the past two decades, media images of the surprisingly white “new face” of the US opioid crisis abounded. But why was the crisis so white? Some argued that skyrocketing overdoses were “deaths of despair” signalling deeper socioeconomic anguish in white communities. Whiteout makes the counterintuitive case that the...

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. "You are what you eat." Never is this truer than when we use medications, from beta blockers and aspirin to Viagra and epidurals—and especially psychotropic pills that transform our minds as well as our bodies. Meditating on how modern medicine increasingly measures out...

From SARS to Zika, and Ebola to COVID-19, epidemics and pandemics have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Each outbreak presents new challenges, but the responses are often similar. This important book explores the dimensions, dynamics, and implications of emerging pandemic societies. Drawing on ideas from sociology and science and technology studies, it sheds new light on how pandemics are...

Magic Mushrooms by Peter Stafford describes the dramatic effects people experience when consuming psychoactive mushrooms. There are over 100 "entheogenic" fungi known to stimulate ecstatic states in curious seekers. Stafford recounts the known history of magic mushrooms, also called "sacred" mushrooms, and describes the interesting aspects of this extraordinary class of mind-changers. He tells how they are psychically relaxing and...

Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary exploration of the natural origins and early evolution of this famous plant, highlighting its historic role in the development of human societies. Cannabis has long been prized for the strong and durable fibre in its stalks, its edible and oil-rich seeds, and the psychoactive and medicinal compounds produced by its female flowers....

After the overwhelming positive response from her book The No Bullshit Guide to Getting Sober, with readers asking her, now that they've gotten sober, how do they stay off the drink, Maree realised it was time for her follow-up book. A clear, definitive how-to guide that works; this is popular self-help at its funniest. MacLean also presents the very latest...

If your life appears to be right royally fucked from your drinking, it probably is. But the good news is The No Bullshit Guide to Getting Sober by Maree MacLean is a call to action, not a death sentence. The No Bullshit Guide to Getting Sober challenges us to get more honest than we've ever been before about how and...

Drugs, Intoxication and Society explores intriguing questions about drug use and intoxication: Why do people use drugs? What happens when people are intoxicated? Are we being medicated into normality? Drugs and intoxication have been facts of human life for millennia. Across the world, many people use illicit drugs, smoke, and drink alcohol. Yet very little has been written about their...

'Truthful, modern and real' - Stylist magazine 'Hilarious, sharp, spitfire writing' - Sacha Z. Scoblic, Senior Editor at The Atlantic and author of UNWASTED: MY LUSH SOBRIETY Ever sworn off alcohol for a month and found yourself drinking by the 7th? Think there's 'no point' in just one drink? Welcome! There are millions of us. 64% of Brits want to...

A mother decides to write the story of her son's long-term methamphetamine addiction as a means to understand why he became an addict and how she can help him. Discovering the true extent of his use and the likely result of permanent psychosis, prison or death, she launches a rescue mission to save his life. With the courage to follow...

'They should do something,' I groaned. Then a frightening prospect - they might be me! What the hell could I do? In July 2016, inner-city resident Judy Ryan found a young man - one of 'her regulars' - slumped and quiet at her gate. He had overdosed from heroin. Fortunately, that man lived. But Judy had reached breaking point. After...

Sicily has always acted as a gateway between Europe and the rest of the world. Fought over by the Phoenicians and Greeks, the Romans, Goths and Byzantines, Arabs and Normans, Germans, Spanish and the French for thousands of years, Sicily became a unique melting pot where diverse traditions merged, producing a unique heritage and singular culture. In this fascinating account...

Liberatory Harm Reduction is one of the most important interventions of the 20th century, yet a compilation of its critical stories and voices was, until now, seemingly nowhere to be found. Saving Our Own Lives, an anthology of essays from long-time organiser Shira Hassan, fills this gap by telling the stories of how sex workers, Black, Indigenous, and people of...

Americans are in the midst of a world-historic drug binge. Opiates, amphetamines, benzodiazepines, marijuana, antidepressants, antipsychotics—across the board, consumption has shot up in the 21st century. At the same time, the United States is home to the largest prison system in the world, justified in part by a now zombified "war" on drugs. How did we get here? Quick Fixes...

How the politicisation of the pandemic endangers our lives—and our democracy COVID-19 has killed more people than any war or public health crisis in American history, but the scale and grim human toll of the pandemic were not inevitable. Pandemic Politics examines how Donald Trump politicised COVID-19, shedding new light on how his administration tied the pandemic to the president's...

A poignant and compassionate work of literary journalism that tackles Australia's most controversial pastime. Almost 200,000 poker machines sing and flash in pubs, clubs, and casinos in every corner of the country. They're highly complex devices, their components designed by mathematicians, musicians, animators, and ergonomic experts. They're also widely considered the most harmful form of gambling, the cause of the...

Joint Winner of Oral History Australia Book Award, 2021 Shortlisted in the 2021 Victorian Community History Awards, Oral History Award The people who volunteered to help during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s provided compassion and support to heavily stigmatised people. These volunteers provided in-home care for the sick and dying, staffed needle exchanges and telephone help-lines,...

A global history of intoxication, exploring the international spectrum of drug use in cultures across the world, from prehistory to the present day. Every society is a high society. Every day, people drink coffee on European terraces, chew betel nut in Indonesian markets, take coca leaf on Andean mountainsides and smoke tobacco in every nation on earth. Mike Jay's global...

What happened next? It's the question Jill Stark has been asked most often since the publication of her acclaimed memoir, High Sobriety. As one of the original pioneers in the 'quit lit' space, Jill started a national conversation about the role of alcohol in our lives, turning the lens on her own rocky relationship with booze and forensically dissecting the...