The 18 Best Quit Lit Books for Starting a Sober Lifestyle

People who have experienced alcoholism or who just want to cut down on their use, are finding solace in a new genre of storytelling called Quit Lit. Quit Lit offers inspirational accounts of quitting alcohol, sober living, and the ups and downs that come with this lifestyle change. Reading these stories helps people who are seeking sobriety or living sober feel understood, seen, and less alone in their recovery journey.

Sobriety can feel overwhelming in a drinking world. After a complicated relationship with alcohol, not only are you navigating a new internal dialogue about how to deal with stress, anxiety, trauma, or simply how to relax without drinking, but there’s an added challenge of figuring out how to socialize and relate to others sans liquid courage. It’s no wonder relapse can be tempting without the right support in place.

Whether you’re sober curious, want to drink less, or have been working in therapy or a 12-step program for some time, Quit Lit can provide additional support for your sobriety.

Here are 18 Quit Lit books to start reading today:

The Best Quit Lit Guides for Beginners

Early sobriety has its own challenges and pitfalls, but a good Quit Lit book can offer much-needed advice on how to avoid them. These books serve as instruction manuals for getting started with a sober, sober curious, or mindful drinking lifestyle. Whether you’re looking for inspiring research, humor, professional insight or an alternative to willpower, this list has something for you.

1. Sober Curious: The Blissful Sleep, Greater Focus, Limitless Presence, and Deep Connection Awaiting Us All on the Other Side of Alcohol

With the rise of self-care as a cultural phenomenon, our drinking habits have been called into question. We’re dipping our toes into the curious waters of sobriety and considering how drinking is impacting our health and relationships. For the first time, many of us are asking, “what’s on the other side?”

If you’ve ever wondered what life would be like without drinking, Sober Curious answers these questions with research, the author’s personal narrative and open-minded humor.

2. Sober On A Drunk Planet: Giving Up Alcohol. The Unexpected Shortcut to Finding Happiness, Health and Financial Freedom

In the world of Quit Lit, Sober Living On A Drunk Planet, is a staple that many readers cite as a game-changer, especially for beginners. It offers a straightforward and humorous approach to a topic that can often be heavy and seem too difficult to get started.

With his qualifications as a counselor, coach and “former drunk,” Sean Alexander delivers relatable and honest insight into the damage alcohol can wreak on one’s life and how to go about being sober when the rest of the world is drinking. Expect to be challenged and entertained.

3. Allen Carr’s Quit Drinking Without Willpower: Be a happy nondrinker 

Deciding to live a sober life requires effort, but willpower doesn’t work for everyone. Author Allen Carr, who succeeded in helping many of his 12 million-plus readers quit smoking without willpower, shares a no-nonsense, easy-to-follow guide to becoming a nondrinker—willpower optional.

Quit Drinking Without Willpower will give readers a step-by-step guide to kick the habit and never look back. This book has helped readers with varied relationships to alcohol uncover why the urge to drink exists in the first place. It offers solutions on how to get started and gain control over the habit and your life.

4. Mindful Drinking: How Cutting Down Can Change Your Life

Some people have identified drinking as a milder issue in their lives and are simply looking for a little help with finding balance. Mindfulness techniques can offer a way to get centered, reduce drinking and enjoy alcohol in moderation.

During her own fight against triple-negative breast cancer, Rosamund Dean sought ways to live a healthier lifestyle which led her to add health coaching to her professional journalism resume. In Mindful Drinking, she reveals what she learned along the way in a 4-step process for a holistic transformation to measured drinking habits and a better, healthier life.

The Best Quit Lit Memoirs

Memoirs are the backbone of Quit Lit as we know it, likely because narrative evokes our primal connectedness through storytelling. Relating to someone else’s story helps us feel less alone in our own. This list of memoirs gives insight into beginning and maintaining a sober lifestyle as well as inspiration and commiseration with the challenges associated with being sober.

5. Dry: A Memoir

Known for his gripping childhood memoir Running with Scissors, Augusteen Burroughs shares the next biggest challenge of his life in Dry. The premise of this memoir rests on Burroughs returning home after rehab where he must learn to navigate the town that landed him there, but this time without alcohol. This true story touches on emotional notes that are deep, funny, and unapologetically honest about the challenges of returning to life after getting sober.

6. Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget 

Anyone whose drinking problem has led to memory lapses with what they said or did the night before will find good company in Blackout. In this bestselling and inspirational memoir, Sarah Hepola shares her story of discovering that what she sought from drinking could only be found when she stopped. Readers have cited this memoir as relatable, witty and “wickedly observant.” A reviewer captured it perfectly with “If you’re looking for an honest short biography by a talented writer – this should be your choice.”

7. Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction 

Few Quit Lit memoirs touch on the challenges of living with both anxiety and alcohol dependency. Between Breaths captures both with painful honesty. After living in the public eye as the former adored anchor of ABC 20/20, Elizabeth Vargas gives a peak into a life she managed to keep secret until she hit rock bottom of alcohol addiction fueled by lifelong anxiety and panic.

With reviews like “A remarkable journey from a remarkable woman. A must read. I literally couldn’t put the book down,” and “Very honest, no ego and so brave,” this is a must-read on the Quit Lit list.

8. Girl Walks Out of a Bar: A Memoir 

With dark comedy and deep insight Girl Walks Out of a Bar is Lisa Smith’s true story of a high-functioning career and family woman living with secret alcoholism and addiction. Quit Lit readers have related to her experience using her drinking and drugs to blot out childhood traumas in adulthood and the physical, emotional and spiritual toll this took on her. With humility and resolve, the inspiring story shows a woman determined to get sober and live a better life.

9. Stash: My Life in Hiding

Stash, is a memoir that unearths and dismantles the idea that privilege protects from addiction of any kind. Facing divorce, self-sabotage, imposter syndrome and internalized (and external) racism, Laura Cathcart Robbins slowly removes the facade she built for protection to get to the heart of the matter and get sober. Though not specifically about alcohol, this Quit Lit memoir is relatable and inspiring for anyone secretly unraveling with substances while looking normal to the outside world.

The Best Quit Lit for Women

Quit lit, as a genre, offers copious female narratives, but only a few are specifically focused on a female audience. Women face unique challenges and social pressures that can make them susceptible to developing a drinking problem or hiding it from those they love. Among the 13% of adult women who binge drink, “25% do so at least weekly, on average, and 25% consume at least six drinks during a binge drinking occasion,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Not only are women navigating a culture that encourages this kind of drinking, but they are also navigating an internal dialogue about how to deal with stress, anxiety, trauma, or simply how to relax without drinking. This list highlights Quit Lit books that specifically address the challenges of sobriety for women.

9. Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol

As both a book on sobriety and a “feminine-centric recovery program,” Quit Like A Woman offers a wide-lens view of all of the ways drinking culture targets women, impacts women and how women can take back their lives by giving it up.

Holly Whitaker’s feminist perspective shines through as the book takes on misogyny, nationalism, racism and offers ideas for recovery for many marginalized groups. She offers an alternative to people who aren’t interested in AA and would rather take on sobriety their own way.

10. The Sober Diaries: How one woman stopped drinking and started living 

This inspiring and comic story chronicles a year in the life of a middle-aged woman who finds herself overweight and addicted to alcohol after giving up her power career to become a stay-at-home mother. Just as she decides to give up alcohol, she gets a breast cancer diagnosis and her booze-free year begins.

Spoiler alert: By the end, she drops the weight, the alcohol, and her cancer is gone. She gains a positive new life and shares what she’s learned with research to back up her experience. Women looking for motivation to live alcohol-free will likely find it in these pages.

11. Euphoric: Ditch Alcohol and Gain a Happier, More Confident You

The pressure for “just one drink” to turn into several is everywhere and Euphoric has answers on how to get back control and manage social drinking or ditch it altogether in an eight-week guide. Sober curious women and women who are already sober alike will find this book helpful for learning what life looks like on the wagon, how it impacts women’s health and mindful approaches to socializing when alcohol is around.

The Best Quit Lit for Men

While Quit Lit has taken on a life of its own mostly targeting women, some sources state that the genre originated with a book written by a man. Considering the National Institutes of Health (NIH) statistic that men display a higher prevalence of alcoholism, this origin story is fitting. Men can benefit from reading books written by men that share male narratives and/or are male-focused because it offers a view of alcohol fitting for their distinctive social and cultural experiences and pressures in the world. The list showcases books for men, by men or that offer a perspective that is male-focused.

12. Alcohol Lied to Me – New Edition: The Intelligent Escape from Alcohol Addiction 

Craig Beck wrote this guide after 20 years of “2 bottles a night” while functioning as a family man with a highly successful media career. In it he unravels the lies he once believed on his journey to sobriety and the methods that finally worked for him. A must-read for anyone looking for a new perspective on how to change their relationship with alcohol.

13. Sober is Dope: Sobriety Prayers and Affirmations for Attracting Health, Happiness, and Abundance in Recovery

If you’re seeking a spiritual approach to sobriety, Sober Is Dope offers 365 affirmations plus meditations, healing prayers and spiritual quotes to aid in your recovery.  As a sobriety activist and musician, Pop Buchanan’s over ten years of sobriety led him to create this faith-based book. The book offers a sense of community for those who are isolated in their recovery and just need a little extra motivation.

14. Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions

It’s not uncommon to hear stories of celebrity addiction and alcoholism. What is unique about Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions is that Russell Brand doesn’t just share his story, but he uses his experience to guide others in recovery. In his well-known comedic fashion, Brand offers a candid look at the steps that he actually took to beat addiction to “heroin, alcohol, sex, fame, food, and eBay,” and details them for anyone struggling with the same.

Reviewers have cited the book as “down to earth” with one stating that this is a “book that speaks the same language I do. Uses the same words I do. And outthinks me at every step of the way.”

The Best Quit Lit Books Addressing the Science of Addiction

If you are fact-oriented and want to understand the physical and psychological benefits of sobriety, look no further than this list of gems. These books cover the physiological, neurological, and psychological reasons for drinking in the social contexts that perpetuate the habit. Understanding the science behind alcohol dependency is sometimes all we need to know when it comes to where to start eliminating that dependency.

15. This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life

This Naked Mind unpacks the neurological and psychological reasons we use alcohol and the social as well as cultural factors that keep us dependent. This research-based book aims to remove the psychological dependence “ so that you will not crave alcohol, allowing you to easily drink less (or stop drinking).” With reviewers claiming they have gotten their life back after reading this book, it is a powerful recovery tool that shouldn’t be overlooked.

16. Alcohol Explained: Understand Why You Drink and How To Stop It

If you’ve ever wondered how one can go from a first drink to full-blown alcoholism, Alcohol Explained uncovers the chemical, physiological, and psychological impact of alcohol on humans. Easily a handbook for anyone struggling with alcoholism, the author speaks from experience and research. He breaks down concepts in an understandable and relatable way for a Quit Lit game-changer.

18. The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober 

No Quit Lit list would be complete without The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober. Interwoven with her personal struggles with alcoholism, Catherine Gray speaks with top neuroscientists and psychologists about the reasons we drink, and how it affects our brains and bodies. This bestselling book is for the sober curious to the recovered alcoholic who wants to understand the mechanisms behind their drinking and the science behind quitting.

Beyond Quit Lit: Get the Sobriety Support You Need

Alcohol dependency is a serious issue that can have devastating consequences on your body, mind and life. While these books can offer inspiration, support and resources for your recovery, they are not a replacement for professional help. If you or a loved one is dealing with substance abuse, addiction, and sobriety there are online medication programs for addiction, as well as online therapy options and online therapist directories that can help get you started.