Recovery Is Possible: An Addict's Story
A lived experience account of addiction, trauma, and early recovery
Recovery Is Possible An Addict’s Story is my first book. It is an honest and unfiltered account of addiction and the first year of recovery, written not as a therapist or professional, but as someone walking the road alongside you.
This is not a book about fixing yourself or following a programme. It is a story about survival, truth, and what it actually feels like when you stop numbing and start facing life.
This book exists because recovery does not suddenly make everything better. For me, it made everything louder. My thoughts, my emotions, and my past all came rushing to the surface. Alcohol had been muting signals I did not even know I was ignoring.
Writing became a way to make sense of that noise and to share the truth about early recovery without polishing it for comfort.
Recovery Is Possible tells the story of how childhood trauma shaped my life long before addiction ever showed up. I write openly about abandonment, years of sexual abuse as a child, a violent and unprovoked attack at the age of thirteen that nearly killed me, and later the devastating loss of a child.
These experiences did not make me weak. They led me to survive in the only ways I knew how at the time. Addiction was not a choice. It was a coping strategy that eventually stopped working.
The book walks with you through my first year in recovery. Not as a therapist or doctor, but as a companion. I share what helped me through cravings, triggers, other people’s opinions, and the overwhelming task of learning how to live without numbing.
I talk about setting intentions, finding small routines, and using activities to get through the moments that felt unbearable. There is no jargon and no clinical language, only lived experience and honesty.
I chose to go into recovery publicly, sharing my journey openly on Facebook. Writing this book was part of that recovery project. It was written to show that recovery is possible even when life has already taken so much.
Along the way, it connected with people across the world who recognised their own stories in mine. The book went on to become an Amazon bestseller in several categories and a finalist in the Wishing Shelf Book Awards in 2021, but its real impact has always been the messages from readers who finally felt understood.
This book contains references to violence and recounts experiences of childhood sexual abuse. Please read with care and at your own pace.
All profits from Recovery Is Possible An Addict’s Story go to Burton and District Mind, supporting mental health recovery in the local community.
This book began as an act of survival and continues as an act of service.
Recovery Is Possible is written for people in early recovery who feel overwhelmed, for those who are sober but struggling more than they expected, for survivors of trauma trying to understand addiction, and for anyone who wants honesty rather than slogans.
It is not a guide and it does not promise easy answers. It is a reminder that you are not broken and you are not alone.