I wanted to read this book because I read Holly Whitaker’s blog, and I read The Temper, and I quit drinking alcohol a year and a half ago.
This book is half recovery memoir and half how to quit drinking guide, with a sprinkling of opinions about Alcoholics Anonymous. The recovery memoir part is interesting, because everyone has their own story about how they recovered from anything they had to recover from. The opinions on AA are so necessary – AA can work for some people, but there’s no reason why it should be the primary recovery program when it’s basically made by middle aged white men, for middle aged white men.
Some parts of how to quit drinking made perfect sense to me.
“If we think quitting alcohol is some sort of punishment, that a sober life is impossible or a boring and endless void, then we are setting ourselves up for an experience that will feel punitive and pointless and ceaseless and depressing. If, however, we shift those perceptions and beliefs, and start to embrace a different idea – that recovery could be life-changing and emancipating; that the best is yet to come; that sobriety offers us everything alcohol promised – we’re setting up a very different narrative.”
If you feel like you’re missing out on something by not drinking, or that not drinking will make your life boring, or that this is your punishment, then not drinking is going to be awful. If you feel like not drinking gives you the energy to wake up and go running in the mornings, makes you sleep better, makes you happier, makes you a better friend and gives you more time for the things you enjoy, then not drinking is one facet of you living your best life.
There were some parts about how to quit drinking that I felt like were polar opposites of my experience. There’s a chapter called “How to Quit Alcohol When You’ve Never Stuck to a Diet”. I don’t think the diet analogy works very well, because if you’re trying to stick to a diet, you still have to eat multiple times a day, whereas with alcohol, you can just…not…drink. And it’s more complicated than that for a lot of people, but it’s not the same as a diet.
“I was a woman who could not quit. I could not quit cigarettes, nail-biting, meat, food, men, or spending. I could not maintain discipline, or perfection, or diets, or workout regimens, or budgets. I could not keep promises to myself when it came to anything, I had a faulty brake system and had never quite developed any kind of willpower.”
I’ve never smoked a cigarette. I’ve never bitten my nails. I was vegetarian for six years, I’ve run three half marathons, and I will talk to you for 45 minutes about my budget (I use YNAB, it’s great, and I also use an extensive spreadsheet that I would love to share with you.) Maybe this is why quitting drinking felt so easy for me – it’s easy for me to be disciplined, sometimes to a fault.
If you quit drinking, or are thinking about quitting drinking, it’s a worthwhile read.