17 Heart-Wrenching Memoirs About Addiction

In Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, Koren Zailckas offers a cautionary tale about how high school and college binge-drinking can develop into addiction. Like many of the authors on this list, Zailckas had a moment when she realized her drinking had veered into abuse that she could no longer normalize. Zailckas does a particularly poignant job of capturing the self-consciousness of girlhood, the normalization of "pre-partying," and the deep shame that accompanies a hangover. — NE