It seems to me that people in recovery might get sick of reading self-help books. Sometimes, a memoir can be refreshing, especially for teens struggling with drinking issues. Koren Zailckas’ fantastic memoir, Smashed, comes to mind. Now award-winning Canadian young adult author, Susan Juby, has written Nice Recovery, about her years as a teenage alcoholic.
Juby, who is 41 and has been sober for more than 20 years, says, in an interview in the Vancouver Sun, that she wrote Nice Recovery to “honour where I came from…I didn’t get here by accident. I’m really lucky to be having a functional life. I thought maybe it would be instructive, or I would scare people straight through my extreme lameness.”
Juby doesn’t have children, but she does offer advice for parents on how to approach drug and alcohol abuse with their children: 1) Keep the lines of communication open; and 2) “Kids should have an awareness [of the difference] between social drinking and experimenting with drugs and what addiction looks like, because there’s a big difference. Most kids are going to experiment, but some of them are going to cross that line [into addiction], so it’s great if they can understand what that line looks like.”
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Thank you for sharing this. I’m ordering the book right now!
I loved both books – also “Blackout Girl” – because they gave me insight into my own drinking patterns as a young adult. Before I read them I always considered my alcoholism to be something relatively new, but as a result of their stories I saw my own behavior reflected back.