A Clean Mess

A Memoir of Sobriety After a Lifetime of Being Numb

$13.99 US
Harmony/Rodale | Harmony
On sale Jun 03, 2025 | 9780593232644
Sales rights: World
The bestselling author of High Achiever reckons with life after addiction in this darkly funny and emotionally raw new memoir

“For as long as I can remember my mind was like a train with only three stops. Stop number one—getting money for drugs. Stop number two—getting drugs. Stop number three—getting high. During the years I should have been learning to save money, file taxes, and pay bills, I was stuck on a train to nowhere. Now some­how my train was on a brand-new course to somewhere I’d never been, and I was the friggin’ conductor.”

After a brutal struggle with opioid addiction that landed her four months in prison, Tiffany was ready for a fresh start. What she didn't expect was just how fast life would happen once she was out of prison. She went from felon to married, sober mom of three in just two years. But life doesn’t stop happening; her marriage collapsed a few years later, a crisis that forced her reckoning with the foundations of her mental health and sobriety.

As she forged her future, Tiffany learned to feel emotions and live life without numbing herself with drugs. She had to figure out how to be a mom, how to have a career, how to be married, how to get divorced, how to be an adult, and how to have feelings all at the same time. With dark humor and page-turning storytelling, she shows how she learned to survive when her crutches and band aids were taken away from her, and the gratitude and peace she found on the other side of addiction.

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The bestselling author of High Achiever reckons with life after addiction in this darkly funny and emotionally raw new memoir

“For as long as I can remember my mind was like a train with only three stops. Stop number one—getting money for drugs. Stop number two—getting drugs. Stop number three—getting high. During the years I should have been learning to save money, file taxes, and pay bills, I was stuck on a train to nowhere. Now some­how my train was on a brand-new course to somewhere I’d never been, and I was the friggin’ conductor.”

After a brutal struggle with opioid addiction that landed her four months in prison, Tiffany was ready for a fresh start. What she didn't expect was just how fast life would happen once she was out of prison. She went from felon to married, sober mom of three in just two years. But life doesn’t stop happening; her marriage collapsed a few years later, a crisis that forced her reckoning with the foundations of her mental health and sobriety.

As she forged her future, Tiffany learned to feel emotions and live life without numbing herself with drugs. She had to figure out how to be a mom, how to have a career, how to be married, how to get divorced, how to be an adult, and how to have feelings all at the same time. With dark humor and page-turning storytelling, she shows how she learned to survive when her crutches and band aids were taken away from her, and the gratitude and peace she found on the other side of addiction.