In the fall of 2016, an old friend called to tell me she’d been sober for six months and hoped it was a down payment on forever. This was a woman with whom I joyfully drank during our junior year abroad in London. In our later years as mothers, we joked about drinking vodka — aka “water” — while our kids were in the bath.
My first horrified thought was Why on earth would she do something like that?! Almost immediately, I replied to myself: Oh, Kerri, that reaction has much more to do with you than it does with her.
I knew that my drinking was a problem. I was constantly making rules for myself that I always broke: Only drink on weekends, only one drink per night, only drink when out with friends. I could not get through a dry January without becoming an irritable jerk, then throwing in the towel by mid-month. I was drinking more than what it appeared, and my tolerance had skyrocketed.
I asked my friend how she managed to stop, and we began a dialogue that would completely change my life. At the time, she was listening to the “HOME Podcast” with Laura McKowen and Holly Whitaker, two authors whose work focuses largely on recovery and the culture of alcohol.
She also recommended Annie Grace‘s book “This Naked Mind,” which I promptly devoured; I found unspeakable relief in the way Grace put the blame on alcohol, not the drinker. Alcohol is inherently addictive; of course so many humans become addicted!
