Non-Fiction
Read it!
I had read recommendations about this book from a few places (hello pinterest!) but picked this one up as the subject matter is very personal for me.
This is an autobiographical type book from Holly Whitaker. She takes us slowly (and sometimes multiple times) through her journey and struggle with Alcohol dependence. She takes on the patriarchal use of alcohol, how media affects our judgment on seeing alcohol as normal, and the good and bad bits about AA. I found many of the authoress's ideas to be phenominally simple, yet very important. Kind of like obvious things that you should ideally be able to see easily, but don't until someone points them out.
I never thought of Alcohol as a tool of the patriarchy - or a tool of the capitalist market too. Holly makes a point that after a certain point, it made sense to market heavily to women because that's where the market growth was possible. I couldn't agree more. As women, we've also been sold the fallacy that in order to suceed, we need to play like the boys. Cuss, drink whiskey, and not have feelings. Now....there's nothing wrong with any of those things (except maybe the feelings thing - psychopath!) but not only do they not need to be attributed to men, women don't need them to be sucessful, nor do they need to be men in order to get places.
Holly Whitaker also takes people through the fallacy that AA is the only way to stop drinking. I didn't have much exposure to AA before now - although I was taught this is the holy grail of detox as well - and it's refreshing to hear that there are other options. As an atheist, bringing god into the mix as necessary to get rid of a drinking problem horrified me. She also went into depth about the feelings that people have when they're not sure they drink too much and how they use different metrics to either decide they are fine or lable themselves as alcoholics.
The uses of such lables also was an interesting thought exercise for me. I'm not a big fan of lables, especially those that are closely tied with people's identity.
As I mentioned early, Holly tends to repeat points. It's a common thing as I understand when an author is discussing something close to their heart. It does get a bit tedious though. With all the hullabaloo about AA not being the answer and Holly hinting that quitting was simple....she provided very little insight into this. To be honest this was expected from my end, but you can't take away the main point of hope for people then not offer an alternative.
I've had a long and complicated history with alcohol as well. Perhaps not so rough as Holly's, but long and complicated none the less. I still have to make a decision every once in a while not to drink. Of all the complicated relationships I've ever been in, this one is by far the most difficult to deal with and I appreciated the thought and encouragment that the author put into this book. I hope many more people read it, especially the ones who need to read it most. I'd encourage you to read it, even if you don't have (or suspect you have) a drinking problem. It will help you re-evaluate your relationship with alcohol and the motivations and factors that can go into drinking.
~Becky~
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