A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how I'm combatting my dry flaky wintry skin. Today I’m going to write about a dryness that is deliberate. Dry January.
Yep, no margaritas for me. No half a little gummy before the concert. Nope. Nothing, and don’t applaud my incredible will power—after the bacchanal we call the holidays, I eagerly strode into this month of sobriety, happy to take a break. I’m enjoying better sleep, better skin, and better–if perhaps duller–weekends (i.e., no hangovers). It’s all peachy. And I do think it’s a great idea to occasionally take a month off all the fun substances to become more mindful about my intake. I’ve done this before, and after a month away it’s impossible to not reset and approach it a little differently come February.
The relative ease of it all shows me something else. Despite all my best efforts, it seems I'm not an alcoholic. I do love books about alcoholics and drug addicts, however. So I thought in light of my month of sobriety I’ll suggest a few favorites.
Before my recommendations, some caveats:
This is not an exhaustive list. So many great novels feature at least one character with a substance abuse issue. I mean, that’s where the action is, amirite?
This feels so on the nose, but I can’t remember some of my favorite books about drunks.
The cheekily nicknamed “Quit Lit” is its own booming and awesome mini-industry, and two of my recs here fall into that genre. I think it’s fascinating that we are just now embracing the notion that women drink too much for different reasons than men. Hashtag progress. Hashtag why did this take so long?
Vicarious drinking & drugging
Wired
This is the classic story of a star brought down by drugs by Bob Woodward, the one that started it all for me. I haven't read it in a million years, so I just put a hold on it at the library to see if it still holds up. Maybe put an asterisk beside this recommendation, and don’t cancel me if it’s filled with problematic references to women and people of color.
At the tender age of 16, Wired introduced me to the story of a person with so much to live for who ruins themselves with drugs. [An aside: when I was 16, YA wasn’t a thing and one of these days I’m going to revisit the books that filled that vacuum–Anne Rice, Jackie Collins, Sidney Sheldon. Consider yourself warned.] 1
With John Belushi’s tragic arc, I discovered a fundamental truth about myself: I am utterly fascinated by the plunge into the abyss. I like the recklessness, the cynicism, the brokenness of it. I like the skeezy enablers, the sinister suppliers. The way some people love to follow the royal family, or have an exhaustive knowledge of the NBA, I like to gather harrowing tales of heroin addicts. Maybe it’s the fearless destructiveness that attracts me, since I’m by nature panicky and risk-averse. Maybe it’s the dark glamor of it all, or the louche self-indulgence. Whatever it might be, these junkies are my anti-heroes.
The Dirt
Motley Crüe’s tell-all is the tawdriest, darkest, tackiest, most deliciously awful story. I know I've recommended it here before because it’s an ideal beach read–light yet engrossingly scandalous. I honestly couldn’t tell you the name of any one of their songs, but I do know that these idiots injected Jack Daniels into their veins. Maybe I like reading about junkies and drunks so I can feel better about myself. Sure, I have 438,654 unread emails but at least I’m not passed out with a needle in my arm.
Or maybe, like the books I read about people who brave the world’s extremes–mountain climbers, survivors of shipwrecks, women with ambition—I like these stories because they’re ultimately tales of our resilience. It’s astounding to learn what the body can endure. For example, they may look rough, but all the members of the Crüe are still alive. As is the ultimate iron man, Keith Richards, whose memoir, Life, is terrific but encompasses so much more than his astonishingly bad habits I’m not including it here.
When it comes to substance abuse, of course the rock stars knock it out of the park, but don’t nap on Winston Churchill. I’ve read a couple books about him, and his capacity to make decisions literally freighted with global impact while definitely soused is kind of incredible.
Is it even a novel if someone isn’t drinking too much?
There are a million great novels about substance abuse. Please remind me of any you kind readers can think of, but in the meantime here are a few that came to mind.
The Girl on the Train
I think most of us have read Paula Hawkins’s bestseller, or seen the movie. It’s a decent thriller, but a great book about a woman with a serious drinking problem. For me, the main character’s blackouts and hangxiety were the most dreadful and chilling aspect of the story. The physical violence was unnecessary–her shame and confusion were frightening enough.
Problems
This strange little novel by Jade Sharma is not for the timid. It’s a sharply written, weirdly funny story about a really transgressive young woman in NYC who is trying to keep her heroin habit going while her life unravels. If you want to sink into the darkness with someone literate, sarcastic, and original, this one’s for you. It’s autofiction, and the talented young woman who wrote it tragically died shortly after it was published.
The Flight Attendant
I randomly read this years before it became a hit HBO show, thanks to a recommendation from a friend who would occasionally drop a great read into my mailbox. These were almost always library books, checked out in her name. That, my friends, is trust.
I actually think the HBO version of The Flight Attendant expressed the main character’s drinking problem in a way that maybe the book didn’t, so this is equally a rec for the show’s first season. There’s a scene where she’s looking for someone to have the next drink with. It’s late, she’s already been out for several hours but she’s not ready for the night’s promise of adventure and escape to be over. You see her on a city street, texting or calling one friend after another, cajoling and basically begging anyone she can get on the line to come meet her somewhere. The way she was so desperate for the distraction of friends and another round, to avoid her emotions and her life by escaping to a bar, to surrender her time and energy to losing control. That resonated with me.
I had that same relentless quest to socialize, and drinking was always a part of it. I never wanted to be alone, which is ironic because now I love being alone. Now my relentless quest is for solitude. It’s easy to say I drank too much because we all did, and that’s true, but I probably took to it because I was anxious and insecure. I had no concept of this then, of course, which makes me sad for younger me.
I’m a grown-up now so I don't really hang out in bars much. Every once in a while, I’ll meet some pals for what we call a “Sunday Shirk,” where instead of folding laundry and haranguing kids about homework we all have maybe 2 beers and split a plate of fries. The low-grade decadence is wonderful. In the parlance of my kids, it’s a “TB”, a throwback.
Like chick lit, but the love interest is tequila
Girl Walks Out of a Bar
A great deal of this book was akin to gawking at a car accident, because I don't even know how someone could consume this much alcohol and not be in the hospital. She was drinking all the vodka, then taking the edge off with bumps of cocaine. And during this period she was killing it at her law firm–maybe she’s a descendant of Winston Churchill?
This might not be the most elegantly written book on the list, yet she tells her story with such candor I couldn’t help but be drawn in. Plus, she could easily be someone I grew up with. Hell, she could be me–a nice middle-class girl from a nice suburb with a good education. She spotlights moments in her adolescence and early adulthood that might’ve nudged her down a path of substance abuse, and connects dots between teenage eating disorders and later substance abuse. I found it incredibly poignant. So while I suggest the Motley Crüe book purely as addict porn, and this does scratch that itch, Girl Walks Out of a Bar feels much more confessional and personal.
And, as the title suggests, she sorts herself out and is now happy and sober.
Quit Like a Woman
This is one of the foundational texts in the Quit Lit canon, and I listened to it before I really knew there even was such a thing as Quit Lit. This veers into that self-help space I don’t love–lots of redundancy, chapters that could’ve been paragraphs, paragraphs that should be sentences. It gets a little you-go-girl sermony but does point out that women who drink too much often do so for reasons that AA’s 12-step program doesn’t address.
I’m delighted and pretty amazed that I don’t have a drinking problem, considering how central getting hammered was in my younger years (something I’m very not proud of at all and if any of my children read this, know that I find my choices as a young person abhorrent and the cause of a lifetime of regret). It’s probably not purely a genetic quirk, however, that has kept me out of rehab. In the past 20+ years, I’ve actively sought a higher level of self-awareness–a sometimes humbling but always worthwhile endeavor. And along the way I’ve realized how often my drinking was mindlessly keeping pace with other people at the table (stupid), or as a way to offset my anxiety (forgivably human). Knowledge is power–paying attention to myself might be what’s kept me from a drinking problem. Or maybe it’s just because I no longer have the time to lay around all weekend recovering.
Regardless, when January is done, I will enjoy that February margarita. I know being sober is sort of having a moment these days, and in some circles sobriety is a stealth wealth type of status symbol. Alas, I will at least for now not be one of the people at dinner who smugly orders a seltzer. As a friend once said, “Everything in moderation… including moderation.”
Joan Collins is still alive and amazingly looks pretty great considering she’s 134 years old. Her memoir, Past Imperfect, was another 80’s YA favorite for me.
Love this. Remind me to lend you my copy of The Thirsty Muse -- all about drunken novelists .... it's a long long list...
I loved the Dirt!