Book notes: Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery
Nov 07, 2020
By Erica C. Barnett.
I found out about the author from her contributions to the “Week In Review” podcast with Bill Radke. Note, the “C” is for “Crank”. :-). I was fascinated by her work that a journalist can make money by covering a small-ish beat (e.g. city council) and take in monthly contributions. I was expecting her work to be at thecisforcrank.com, but that now redirects to publicola.com.
This book is about Erica’s struggle with alcoholism. She is a terrific writer, and lays out in raw emotion and detail the brutal fight with this disease. She knew every store in Seattle that sold alcohol, drank most days, eventually registered a ~0.24 blood alcohol content level, constantly passed out, blacked out/not remembering, and eventually had hallucinations. She lost the trust of friends, family members, and eventually lost her job. I was aghast the whole time reading this book. Blah, how can anyone live this way? According to the book she is alcohol-free since 2016, though there were so many relapse stories in the book, I hope it’s still true! It was interesting to follow along the “12 steps” in her AA recovery, especially step 9 where you have to make amends to those you’ve hurt.
What I learned… it’s impossibly hard to quit! If you try to quit cold turkey, the withdrawal symptoms can be fatal, and should be medically supervised. We should treat alcholism like a disease instead of shaming. Everyone’s path to quitting is different. Every AA group is different. We don’t invest enough in treatment facilities and training. We don’t apply enough scientific rigor to see what works.
Researching further, stats from www.niaaa.nih.gov about Acohol Use Disorder in the USA (2018 is latest available data):
- 14.1 million adults (5.6%) have Alcohol Use Disorder.
- … of those, only 7.9% received treatment in the past year.
- Alcohol is the 3rd leading preventable cause of death, killing 95k people/year. (Smoking is #1, klling nearly 500k)
- 10% of children live with a parent with alcohol problems.