Sober October, Dryuary, and even New Year’s resolutions to cut back on vices might just seem like superficial social media challenges for bragging rights. However, they also highlight a widespread underlying desire for community and support among folks struggling with substance dynamics. The impact substance use might have on our daily lives is sometimes subtle, gradual, and largely unacknowledged before terms like rehab or overdose come into play. While party culture is heavily normalized, statistics show that 16million Americans misuse prescription medication, 10million misuse opioids, and 1 in 10 Americans over 12 show signs of Alcohol Use Disorder. Factors such as genetics, environment, or diagnosed mental health conditions increase individual risk for substance abuse.

The most profitable type of addiction care in the US is treatment-based rather than preventative and based on demonstrated risk factors. And while rehab centers focus on rehabilitating, the momentum of social media sobriety movements shows that, on a community level, there is both concern and peer support among folks looking to manage harmful coping mechanisms. In the spirit of expanding that support, I’m offering is a list of poetry collections that directly or indirectly touch on substance use, using poetry as the ever-reliable reminder that nobody is ever alone in their experience.

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Love Is a Dog from Hell

by Charles Bukowski

(Ecco Press, 2002)

If there was ever an author that could make me want to reach for a bottle of bourbon, it’s Bukowski. This collection showcases the voice of “the mutilated who still need love,” every poem aching with the desire to be held. The love between these pages in indeed a dog, and indeed hellish by the fact that the speaker finds it always elusive.

Bukowski writes from the wound, the voice of an escapist with his heart always half in the bottle. And while there are many precipitating factors for substance abuse, male loneliness might be the most easily relatable. The speaker of this collection feels profoundly lonely, alien, and misunderstood. I’m starting the list with this collection to perhaps elicit empathy for the state of mind that leads to seeking escape through substance abuse.

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Calling a Wolf a Wolf

by Kaveh Akbar

(Alice James Books, 2017)

Although some might pick Portrait of an Alcoholic as a more relevant collection to the struggle with addiction and sobriety, I believe Calling a Wolf a Wolf takes precedence in the journey. This collection is the metaphorical embodiment of the first two steps of the AA program. Calling a wolf a wolf means, in essence, acknowledging the addiction as a problem and giving it a name.

All the poems are steeped in what seems like a back-and-forth struggle with the second step: relinquishing control to a higher power, and sometimes even questioning the nature of this higher power itself. The poems are honest and raw, but far from the type of confessional that would risk turning them into trauma porn. They keep the reader well-anchored in poetic space as the speaker struggles between despair and redemption.

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Sinners Welcome

by Mary Karr

(HarperCollins Publishers, 2009)

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Addiction recovery undoubtedly spurs some sort of connection or reconnection with one’s spirituality. Be it through the twelve steps, religion, or marathon running, rewiring the neural pathways that link trigger to substance use requires determination and practice. Karr’s practice happens to be intertwined with both questioning and leaning on religion, which creates fertile ground for poetic symbolism and metaphor.

The poems in this collection explore the idea of sin in many of its meanings and expressions in order to eventually integrate it into the natural human experience. Through the many faces of grief in this collection, the speaker deals with her mother’s addiction and death and the deaths of friends and turns poetry into a companion on her journey to sobriety by infusing it with wit, humor, and a prayer-like quality.

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God’s Silence

by Franz Wright

(Penguin Random House, 2008)

Almost in contrast with Karr’s approach, Wright’s poems spring out of silence and solitude. However, their godlessness isn’t entirely unspiritual. The sense of alienation and loneliness becomes almost a function of the speaker’s history being socialized in the toxic masculine tradition of repressing emotional displays. The desire for softness and connection comes through as a spiritual pursuit, against the backdrop of temptation to numb with substance use. Wright tackles a concept well-known to those going through recovery: the fear. It’s the existential dread, the possibility that once the numbing agents are gone, so are the bearings and the tools one uses to navigate life: “Always, / always comes the / then what: / I speak of / the Fear. / Too well what I refer to one of you will understand!”

In spite of the constant struggle these poems embody, this collection includes one of my all-time favorite poems, the most genuine and overwhelming illustration of tenderness for the concept of humanity.

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Mayakovsky’s Revolver

by Matthew Dickman

(W. W. Norton & Company, 2014)

A powerful collection centered around the suicide of Dickman’s brother, where poems struggle between experiencing grief and numbing it away. The tone of the collection is that of a fever dream. The speaker blurs the line between memory and imagination, every poem steeped in a desire to find meaning in the cycle of grief/causing loss/causing grief.

The most compelling element in Dickman’s writing is the search for closeness with the sibling that struggled with addiction and suicidal ideation issues that eventually led to his death. This search ranges from exploring childhood traumas to using numbing agents like drugs and alcohol. Throughout, the speaker seems to be trying to get closer to his brother’s trauma while also trying to keep the darkness at bay, an oscillation many of us experience when exploring our family history or genetic predispositions towards substance abuse and mental health struggles.

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Out of the Wreck I Rise: A Literary Companion to Recovery

curated by Neil Steinberg
and Sara Bader

(University of Chicago Press, 2016)

A collection of poetry, quotes, and other musings from a variety of authors who have written from their addiction and about their addiction. Though it may come across as an “inspirational cliché,” the collection approaches a wealth of themes relevant to substance abuse and the journey towards recovery, from personal shame and overwhelm, to relapses and relationships. And while the collection is indeed inspirational, it doesn’t rest on cliché and hollow encouragement, the wide diversity of voices showcased providing readers with the potential find something for whatever stage they might find themselves in their recovery.

Featuring words from Charles Bukowski, John Cheever, Dante, Ricky Gervais, Ernest Hemingway, Billie Holiday, Anne Lamott, John Lennon, Haruki Murakami, Anaïs Nin, Mary Oliver, Samuel Pepys, Rainer Maria Rilke, J. K. Rowling, Patti Smith, Kurt Vonnegut, and many others.

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