Addiction can be difficult to navigate and understand. Here are 7 books to help your teen learn how to cope and better understand addiction—whether it’s theirs or someone else’s.
1. Drug Use and Delinquency: Causes of Dropping out of High School? by Joseph M. Gasper.
This book explores study results of whether drug use and delinquency causes kids to drop out of high school. It also looks at socioeconomic backgrounds (what social class, economic class, neighborhood a teen is from) and whether that has an impact on dropout rates, drug use and troubled behavior.
2. We All Fall Down: Living with Addiction by Nic Sheff
This is the second memoir written by Nic Sheff (the first, titled Tweak, told of Sheff’s life as a meth and heroin addict) that follows the author on his rehab journey, staying clean, relapsing and being a young addict.
3. Twenty Four Hours A Day by Hazelden Publishing
This book is a mainstay for people following popular 12-step programs. There is a reading for every day of the year to keep the addict on track through their recovery.
Source: Celeste
4. Dear Nobody: The True Diary of Mary Rose by Gillian McCain, Legs McNeil, Mary Rose (Illustrator)
This book holds the true diary entries of a young teen, Mary Rose, who battles her high school years through addiction, bullying and dark secrets.
5. Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction by David Sheff
This book chronicles the life of the Sheff family, who rode a major roller coaster ride of torment, pain and life realizations when son Nic (mentioned above, author of We All Fall Down) became addicted to heroin and crystal meth. In this book, his father, David, writes of the boy his son was before addiction and how addiction affected the family.
6. The Dirt on Drugs by Justin Lookadoo
This book is full of hard-hitting facts about the ugly side of drugs. Lookadoo does not hold back in showing teens the horrible consequences drugs can have on a person and their loved ones.
7. Teen Drug Abuse by David Nelson
This book is full of contrasting opinions from experts on the effects and dangers of drug use. A more clinical book, Nelson compiles stories that form a discussion about the world of drugs that can be had in classrooms and at home.
