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Out of the Wreck I Rise: A Literary Companion to Recovery
“There’s still time to change things.”—Siri Hustvedt, The Blazing World
Addiction is easy to fall into and hard to escape. It destroys the lives of individuals, and has a devastating cost to society. The National Institute of Health estimates seventeen million adults in the United States are alcoholics or have a serious problem with alcohol. This scourge affects not only those who drink or use drugs but also their families and friends, who witness the horror of addiction. Both the afflicted and those who love them are often baffled by what is happening, never mind what to do about it. With Out of the Wreck I Rise, Neil Steinberg and Sara Bader have created a resource like no other—one that harnesses the power of literature, poetry, and creativity to illuminate what alcoholism and addiction are all about, while forging change, deepening understanding, and even saving lives.
Structured to follow the arduous steps to sobriety, the book marshals the wisdom of centuries and explores essential topics, including the importance of time, navigating family and friends, Alcoholics Anonymous, relapse, and what Raymond Carver calls “gravy,” the reward that is recovery. Each chapter begins with advice and commentary followed by a wealth of quotes to inspire and heal. The result is a mosaic of observations and encouragement that draws on writers and artists spanning thousands of years—from Seneca to David Foster Wallace, William Shakespeare to Patti Smith. The ruminations of notorious drinkers like John Cheever, Charles Bukowski, and Ernest Hemingway shed light on the difficult process of becoming sober and remind the reader that while the literary alcoholic is often romanticized, recovery is the true path of the hero.
Along with traditional routes to recovery—Alcoholics Anonymous, out-patient therapy, and intensive rehabilitation programs—this literary companion offers valuable support and inspiration to anyone seeking to fight their addiction or to a struggling loved one.
Addiction is easy to fall into and hard to escape. It destroys the lives of individuals, and has a devastating cost to society. The National Institute of Health estimates seventeen million adults in the United States are alcoholics or have a serious problem with alcohol. This scourge affects not only those who drink or use drugs but also their families and friends, who witness the horror of addiction. Both the afflicted and those who love them are often baffled by what is happening, never mind what to do about it. With Out of the Wreck I Rise, Neil Steinberg and Sara Bader have created a resource like no other—one that harnesses the power of literature, poetry, and creativity to illuminate what alcoholism and addiction are all about, while forging change, deepening understanding, and even saving lives.
Structured to follow the arduous steps to sobriety, the book marshals the wisdom of centuries and explores essential topics, including the importance of time, navigating family and friends, Alcoholics Anonymous, relapse, and what Raymond Carver calls “gravy,” the reward that is recovery. Each chapter begins with advice and commentary followed by a wealth of quotes to inspire and heal. The result is a mosaic of observations and encouragement that draws on writers and artists spanning thousands of years—from Seneca to David Foster Wallace, William Shakespeare to Patti Smith. The ruminations of notorious drinkers like John Cheever, Charles Bukowski, and Ernest Hemingway shed light on the difficult process of becoming sober and remind the reader that while the literary alcoholic is often romanticized, recovery is the true path of the hero.
Along with traditional routes to recovery—Alcoholics Anonymous, out-patient therapy, and intensive rehabilitation programs—this literary companion offers valuable support and inspiration to anyone seeking to fight their addiction or to a struggling loved one.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published September 9, 2016
45 people are currently reading
363 people want to read
About the author
Neil Steinberg
17 books27 followersNeil Steinberg is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, where he has been on staff since 1987.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 31, 2017
I found this a great compilation of quotes about recovery. There's tons of stuff out there about the abyss of addiction, less about the complexities of recovery. Any book with quotes from Yeats, Keith Richards and Seneca has got to be good. My favorite from today is Roddy Doyle: "One day at a time, Sweet Jesus. Whoever wrote that one hadn't a clue. A day is a fucking eternity."
December 21, 2016
The only way you will know if you need to read this book is to start reading it. If you find yourself in it, you will read it again and again, finding something a little different every time. Like recovery itself.
November 13, 2016
I found this book was very detailed at the chapter breaks. A lot of the quotes and poems were really inspirational. This book brought back a lot of memories for me because my mother was an alcoholic. She never would admit it though while she was alive. I went to Al-Anon meetings for a while, but like this novel points out in one of the quotes.. it's a lot of crying. Every week I would feel the pain that others were going thru and it broke my heart. I stopped going, it helped and it didn't at the same time. This novel just brought back for me a lot of stuff I've repressed since the death of my mother. I would recommend this to anyone who has dealt with alcoholism, or knows someone going through it...it's a short read with a positive outlook
September 11, 2016
Wonderful
This book is a great guide to where I have been able to travel with many other brothers and sisters! Like the Big Book, I will re-read many times to find experience, strength and hope. 35 years so far.
This book is a great guide to where I have been able to travel with many other brothers and sisters! Like the Big Book, I will re-read many times to find experience, strength and hope. 35 years so far.
January 31, 2020
There is no end to writing about drugs and alcohol and how much fun they are and how funny people are who use them. There is an entire genre of movies and novels dedicated to the joy of being intoxicated. There is less said and shown about the ill effects of consuming these drugs: the strokes, the heart attacks, the cirrhosis of the liver, even the hangovers ... especially the hangovers. One of the greatest descriptions of a hangover ever written in the English language is Tom Wolfe's story of British journalist Peter Fallow waking up the morning after in Chapter 7 of his 1987 novel "The Bonfire of the Vanities." There is less still portrayed and depicted of the process of recovery. It is too long, too slow, too much the same, with too little opportunity for obvious heroism. Who wants to read a novel about somebody who didn't shoot up on Tuesday? Who wants to see a movie about somebody who didn't take the first drink after their grandmother died? Robert Browning wrote a poem in 1883 called "Ixion" in which the hero is punished by Zeus by being chained to a wheel and tortured. The eponymous fellow breaks free, ascends, defies Zeus and says, "Out of the wreck I rise." Neil Steinberg & Sara Bader found a connection between that narrative and Ixion's words and the process of recovery from addiction. So, they borrowed Ixion's defiant and exultant cry and made it the name of their book. The book is a collection of snippets: very short quotations from a remarkable number of literary sources which bear upon the process of getting better after active addiction. It occurred to me that there are not a lot of books like this. Then, upon further reflection, it occurred to me that there are no books like this. The person in recovery looks for help in staying clean and sober anywhere it is to be found: the stories of other people in recovery (the oral tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous); the seemingly trite and corny proverbs printed on posters and hung up at AA meetings; "The Grapevine" -- an on-line international journal for AA members; the Bible; "Alcoholics Anonymous" -- the "Big Book" of AA; AA comic strips like "It Happened to Alice" and "What Happened to Joe." This book has the potential to be a source of strength, hope, encouragement and even humour to the recovering addict or drunk.
June 24, 2021
Writings and quotes from well-known people, largely from the literary world, who have battled with the many stages of addiction and recovery. Some of my favorites:
"Willpower is nothing. Morals are nothing. Lord, this is illness."
"Press on; no feeling is final."
And this by Springsteen: "Sooner or later, sobriety just becomes your life."
That's what I'm waiting for.
To see how many tried and relapsed, then tried and relapsed again, then tried again and succeeded was so heartening to hear about in their own words. Millions of people have done this and so can I.
"Willpower is nothing. Morals are nothing. Lord, this is illness."
"Press on; no feeling is final."
And this by Springsteen: "Sooner or later, sobriety just becomes your life."
That's what I'm waiting for.
To see how many tried and relapsed, then tried and relapsed again, then tried again and succeeded was so heartening to hear about in their own words. Millions of people have done this and so can I.
January 11, 2018
If I were a wealthy woman. I would leave stacks of this book outside AA meetings and therapists offices. I would stash a couple on the L trains and leave in piles outside art schools and cow boy bars in my home state. It does what good poetry often needs to do and finds a truth that prose can’t reach with out a bit of help.
This little book on addiction is not just beautiful it is also careful, helpful and honest. Yet some how it never falls into the man hole of shame. It seems to hold the reader close and say, “ hey I see you, you are not alone and you can get through this.” Then a choir of writers great and humble of others rise up to join in the chorus.
This little book on addiction is not just beautiful it is also careful, helpful and honest. Yet some how it never falls into the man hole of shame. It seems to hold the reader close and say, “ hey I see you, you are not alone and you can get through this.” Then a choir of writers great and humble of others rise up to join in the chorus.
November 20, 2018
I heard about this book during one of my favorite podcasts, Poetry Off the Shelf. Neil Steinberg was on, discussing putting the book together. He read some of the poems and talked about sobriety. He explained that he wants to change from the old myth of glamorous drinking to recovery as a place for heroes.
I love me a good anthology. I discover poets and poems I would otherwise have never met and see things in interesting contexts. Some good friends of mine put together an anthology about birth, and though I was a good fifteen years off from being a parent at the time, I thoroughly enjoyed the anthology, which included both poetry and prose. I was expecting something similar from Out of the Wreck I Rise, but was disappointed to discover that only a few of the poems are complete and everything else is just quotes from things.
The book is set up into different chapters that represent a part of the journey into sobriety. Steinberg writes a few pages at the beginning of each chapter describing this stage of sobriety. The rest of the chapter is a series of quotes that respond to the stage of the chapter. The longer ones are a paragraph, but most are a few short sentences. I wanted stories, poems, essays, and meaty excerpts. What I got were a series of pithy quotes. I was more than a bit disappointed.
My idea of an anthology is substantial works with a common theme all pulled together into one book. What I got were a bunch of quotes that were not substantial enough to communicate a lived experience.
If you gain inspiration from quotes, enjoy, this book is for you. Otherwise, not the book you are looking for.
I love me a good anthology. I discover poets and poems I would otherwise have never met and see things in interesting contexts. Some good friends of mine put together an anthology about birth, and though I was a good fifteen years off from being a parent at the time, I thoroughly enjoyed the anthology, which included both poetry and prose. I was expecting something similar from Out of the Wreck I Rise, but was disappointed to discover that only a few of the poems are complete and everything else is just quotes from things.
The book is set up into different chapters that represent a part of the journey into sobriety. Steinberg writes a few pages at the beginning of each chapter describing this stage of sobriety. The rest of the chapter is a series of quotes that respond to the stage of the chapter. The longer ones are a paragraph, but most are a few short sentences. I wanted stories, poems, essays, and meaty excerpts. What I got were a series of pithy quotes. I was more than a bit disappointed.
My idea of an anthology is substantial works with a common theme all pulled together into one book. What I got were a bunch of quotes that were not substantial enough to communicate a lived experience.
If you gain inspiration from quotes, enjoy, this book is for you. Otherwise, not the book you are looking for.
March 20, 2017
What an awesome book! I'm always eager to find more relevant books on recovery than the outdated and male-centric Big Book of AA. This is perfect, intertwining general epithets with real adventures in recovery from names you know.
August 16, 2024
Out of the Wreck I Rise is a compilation of material from a span of literature dealing with addiction, recovery, relapse and going on with life itself in the wake of your experience. I have never seen a book quite like this before. Anyone, and I mean anyone struggling with an addiction could do worse than to have a copy of this in the house somewhere, to thumb through in order to find solace in an hour of need.
“We read to know we are not alone,” said C.S. Lewis. “The best moments in reading are when you come across something–a thought…that you’d thought special, particular to you,” Hector says in Alan Bennett’s History Boys. “And here it is, set down by someone else.” No, those quotes aren’t in this book. But they serve the purpose: read this stuff to know that what you’ve been through, others have as well. Some made it. Some did not. All are worth listening to.
The material is sometimes cursory, and I mean that in a good way. Stephen King’s The Shining features an alcoholic protagonist–editors Neil Steinberg and Sara Bader include thoughts from him and his wife about his struggles. They also include passages from Jack London’s John Barleycorn, Homer, Dante, Virgil, Shakespeare and James Baldwin; they throw in material from Marianne Robinson, the diaries of John Cheever and Marlon Brando. Hell, they even include a quote from Aunt May in Spider-Man 2 (regarding heroism).
Keep the book handy. When you feel like a drink and know you shouldn’t have one, leaf through the chapter “Wait, For Now.” When you’re in that pink cloud, look through “Nothing to Lose: Early Recovery.” For your family, there’s “Shakespeare’s Child” (you won’t believe the dickish thing Faulkner said that spawned that title). Or just go through it at random. There’s gold in these here hills. Balm for the suffering soul. You’ll continue to suffer, but as the poets collectively argue, that means you’re still alive. You’re still trying.
“We read to know we are not alone,” said C.S. Lewis. “The best moments in reading are when you come across something–a thought…that you’d thought special, particular to you,” Hector says in Alan Bennett’s History Boys. “And here it is, set down by someone else.” No, those quotes aren’t in this book. But they serve the purpose: read this stuff to know that what you’ve been through, others have as well. Some made it. Some did not. All are worth listening to.
The material is sometimes cursory, and I mean that in a good way. Stephen King’s The Shining features an alcoholic protagonist–editors Neil Steinberg and Sara Bader include thoughts from him and his wife about his struggles. They also include passages from Jack London’s John Barleycorn, Homer, Dante, Virgil, Shakespeare and James Baldwin; they throw in material from Marianne Robinson, the diaries of John Cheever and Marlon Brando. Hell, they even include a quote from Aunt May in Spider-Man 2 (regarding heroism).
Keep the book handy. When you feel like a drink and know you shouldn’t have one, leaf through the chapter “Wait, For Now.” When you’re in that pink cloud, look through “Nothing to Lose: Early Recovery.” For your family, there’s “Shakespeare’s Child” (you won’t believe the dickish thing Faulkner said that spawned that title). Or just go through it at random. There’s gold in these here hills. Balm for the suffering soul. You’ll continue to suffer, but as the poets collectively argue, that means you’re still alive. You’re still trying.
November 16, 2020
I’ll admit I skimmed through the quotes in this book and read only the chapter introductions and poetry. I hadn’t realized the book would be mostly quotes versus short stories, full letters & poems, and other longer prose. (I’m not a Quote Person.) But the book was a sort of respite concerning a heavy topic, an alternative to the non-fiction self-help books I’ve been reading on alcoholism as I better understand a friend’s struggles. The selections remind readers they’re nowhere near alone in their struggles with alcohol.
November 14, 2017
Well written and attainable. Raw and unapologetic. A realistic look at addiction through the eyes of witnesses - folks who have been there. It gave me language for dealing with my own addictive behaviors and personality. As well as hope for ways to move forward.
March 29, 2019
Interesting collection of quotes with a small snippet of analysis
Not bad
Not bad
August 1, 2019
Thank you, NPR. Your author interviews are a precious resource.
April 18, 2020
Wonderful companion. Something for everyone from everyone.
Read
March 30, 2017This is a powerful book of poetry, song lyrics and prose written by folks in recovery from addiction. The authors have done an artful job of weaving descriptions of each phase of recovery into the introduction of each chapter. Very powerful!
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews