NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The founder of the first female-focused recovery program offers a groundbreaking look at alcohol and a radical new path to sobriety.“You don’t know how much you need this book, or maybe you do. Either way, it will save your life.”—Melissa Hartwig Urban, Whole30 co-founder and CEO We live in a world obsessed with drinking. We drink at baby showers and work events, … We drink at baby showers and work events, brunch and book club, graduations and funerals. Yet no one ever questions alcohol’s ubiquity—in fact, the only thing ever questioned is why someone doesn’t drink. It is a qualifier for belonging and if you don’t imbibe, you are considered an anomaly. As a society, we are obsessed with health and wellness, yet we uphold alcohol as some kind of magic elixir, though it is anything but.
When Holly Whitaker decided to seek help after one too many benders, she embarked on a journey that led not only to her own sobriety, but revealed the insidious role alcohol plays in our society and in the lives of women in particular. What’s more, she could not ignore the ways that alcohol companies were targeting women, just as the tobacco industry had successfully done generations before. Fueled by her own emerging feminism, she also realized that the predominant systems of recovery are archaic, patriarchal, and ineffective for the unique needs of women and other historically oppressed people—who don’t need to lose their egos and surrender to a male concept of God, as the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous state, but who need to cultivate a deeper understanding of their own identities and take control of their lives. When Holly found an alternate way out of her own addiction, she felt a calling to create a sober community with resources for anyone questioning their relationship with drinking, so that they might find their way as well. Her resultant feminine-centric recovery program focuses on getting at the root causes that lead people to overindulge and provides the tools necessary to break the cycle of addiction, showing us what is possible when we remove alcohol and destroy our belief system around it.
Written in a relatable voice that is honest and witty, Quit Like a Woman is at once a groundbreaking look at drinking culture and a road map to cutting out alcohol in order to live our best lives without the crutch of intoxication. You will never look at drinking the same way again.
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The sections on the culture and advertising of alcohol and drinking obsession in society were great, and I appreciate the attempt to create solutions that aren’t centered on male privilege and masculine approaches, something that isn’t AA, who have dominated the recovery landscape for so long.
While I think this is overall an important book, but I have some problems:
1. I knew – like most work about sobriety – it would be centered on recovery and solutions, but was hoping this book would be more of an examination of the problem of drinking in society and more advice on how to socialize when alcohol is central to our social culture. I found the advice, just cut them off, very unhelpful. The section on alcohol marketing and its impact was the best section, and it was more what I thought this book would be about.
2. I found her solution for recovery to be so incredibly out of touch. While well intentioned, so much of her advice is reliant on having funds. All the classes, and therapies, and products, and exercise classes, these are all frequently unaffordable from people who aren’t financially secure.
Considering so much of the book is about how societal failings impact drinking, this inability to really engage with class and race while co-opting intersectional feminist work is distasteful. The references to the work of women of color and invocation of oppression and structural societal problems while offering solutions that are only really available to able-bodied upper or middle class white women feels disingenuous. As a poor, disabled, queer woman, many of her solutions are for many reasons completely unavailable or impractical for me.
Despite her clear understanding of how male privilege impacted AA and its creation and rhetoric, she seems completely unaware of how much her rhetoric stems from her own privilege as a middle-class white woman.
A side note: I wasn’t aware while reading how expensive her program is! The fact that she says in her book that she raised a million dollars in venture capital to start a business to….. charge women an obscene amount of money to learn how to cure themselves with lemon water and essentials oils. Disrespectful. Peak neoliberal white feminism.
A friend of mine had added this book on Goodreads and it really grabbed my attention. I listened to the audiobook and found it fascinating.
I have never understood our society highly obsessed with alcohol and drugs. I have come to detest alcohol in a big way, especially these last 2 years as I have watched a best friend, my mother in law and my husband become overtaken by it. It changed them all completely and I’m glad they are all making a choice to live a sober life.
Holly was very real, very honest and very likeable. I loved the beginning and how she explains exactly what even just 2-3 drinks a week do to all the systems of the body.
I loved the information on why AA does not work for many women and I agree with much of what she said.
I thought she offered real solutions for finding alternatives to alcohol. Yes, some of them involve more expensive habits and she obviously has money, but I thought she offered many free places to find resources and many low cost alternatives as well.
I do not follow mainstream Christianity which I believe does not portray God in a correct light or share absolute truth but I did find what Holly said matched up with a lot of my beliefs about God.
I loved the discussion on finding and loving our true self and love being the only thing left when all else fails.
I, personally, found the book eye opening and while I dont agree with everything said, I believe much of what is shared here could be applied in many areas of life.