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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
"in some deep and important personal respects you stop growing when you start drinking alcoholically. The drink stunts you, prevents you from walking through the kinds of fearful life experiences that bring you from point A to point B on the maturity scale. When you drink in order to transform yourself, when you drink and become someone you're not, when you do this over and over and over, your relationship to the world becomes muddied and unclear. You lose your bearings, the ground underneath you begins to feel shaky. After a while you don't know even the most basic things about yourself-what you're afraid of, what feels good and bad, what you need in order to feel comforted and calm-because you've never given yourself a chance, a clear, sober chance, to find out."
That's a wonderful quote from Miss Knapp that I really resonated with. When I was drinking, I was avoiding growing up and avoiding facing my issues. In doing so, I lost touch with myself-- what I liked, what I didn't like, what i needed, what I wanted... WHO I WAS. Becoming sober has brought me back to childhood in a way, because I started drinking around 13 years old. I have gotten to know myself again and it has been a real pleasure! I've learned to sit with the uncomfortable bad feelings and just let them pass when they pass. I've learned that it's okay to be shy, I don't need alcohol to make me into someone gregarious and loud, I just need to be me!
All around this memoir contains a lot of great insight. I saw myself in many of the pages. I would highly recommend to anyone who is sober themselves, or thinking about potentially becoming sober. Also,those who were raised by alcoholics (or had any kind of close relationship with an alcoholic) might benefit from reading this as well.
That's a wonderful quote from Miss Knapp that I really resonated with. When I was drinking, I was avoiding growing up and avoiding facing my issues. In doing so, I lost touch with myself-- what I liked, what I didn't like, what i needed, what I wanted... WHO I WAS. Becoming sober has brought me back to childhood in a way, because I started drinking around 13 years old. I have gotten to know myself again and it has been a real pleasure! I've learned to sit with the uncomfortable bad feelings and just let them pass when they pass. I've learned that it's okay to be shy, I don't need alcohol to make me into someone gregarious and loud, I just need to be me!
All around this memoir contains a lot of great insight. I saw myself in many of the pages. I would highly recommend to anyone who is sober themselves, or thinking about potentially becoming sober. Also,those who were raised by alcoholics (or had any kind of close relationship with an alcoholic) might benefit from reading this as well.
At times hard to read, but vastly entertaining. Knapp shows remarkable self-awareness and engages the reader with candor and humor as she describes how addiction affected her life and relationships. Recommended if you or someone you know struggles with any kind of addiction.
Excellent memoir about Knapp’s alcoholism and subsequent recovery and sobriety. Maybe a little too much technical jargon and statistics about alcoholism for me, but her insights about addiction and during her treatment more than made up for that
reflective
medium-paced
read this for my drug use and abuse class, overall a good memoir but some parts felt very repetitive. (though, what is addiction if not repetition?)
Well, what can I say about this book. It was juicy, it was very life-affirming. It reaffirmed my pride and certainty about my choices to stop drinking. I wanted to climb up a high building and shout some passages from the rooftops. It had me revelling in the nature of my brain chemisty, genetics, emotions, and fears.
The biggest reverberation for me was when the narrator pointed out it didn't matter how she got to where she was, what matters is that she start making intelligent and consistent cerebral connections, hence learning from her own mistakes, by not constantly being out of it. That the very pain we use alchohol to escape from is perpetuated by being drunk all the time. Go figure right? but to an alcoholic like myself that was a completely invisible truth. I wish there was a way to really know that truth BEFORE one quits drinking and not after.
Still she ackknowleges how much alchohol helps the modern woman in being temporarily comfortable with her sexuality, in being confrontational about her needs, in letting her fears and passions and emotions get some air. The reasons we drink are generally our big obstacles when we quit, but overcoming these obstacles through hard work leads to self esteem, as opposed to the shame and regret I'm used to.
The biggest reverberation for me was when the narrator pointed out it didn't matter how she got to where she was, what matters is that she start making intelligent and consistent cerebral connections, hence learning from her own mistakes, by not constantly being out of it. That the very pain we use alchohol to escape from is perpetuated by being drunk all the time. Go figure right? but to an alcoholic like myself that was a completely invisible truth. I wish there was a way to really know that truth BEFORE one quits drinking and not after.
Still she ackknowleges how much alchohol helps the modern woman in being temporarily comfortable with her sexuality, in being confrontational about her needs, in letting her fears and passions and emotions get some air. The reasons we drink are generally our big obstacles when we quit, but overcoming these obstacles through hard work leads to self esteem, as opposed to the shame and regret I'm used to.
Sobriety memoir. Interesting and not at all overwrought. Knapp's voice is straightforward, both telling and showing the romance and the destruction of her career as an alcoholic. She captures a few crucial themes: family history, the ability to identify and endure specific emotions, and the curious, crucial, nonstop acceptance that leads to and maintains sobriety. Contrasted with Mary Karr's Lit, this one is much more about getting sober as a life's work in an of itself than getting sober as just one more thing that makes you special.
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced