Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol

The creator of a programme for women alone provides an innovative new route to rehabilitation.

You may or may not need this book more than you realise. It will save your life in any case.—Melissa Hartwig Urban, cofounder and CEO of Whole30

Our world is consumed by alcohol. We have drinks at business functions and baby showers, book clubs and brunches, funerals and graduations. The only thing that is ever questioned, however, is why someone chooses not to drink; nobody ever challenges the pervasiveness of alcohol. Imbibing is a requirement for membership; if you don't, you are seen as an exception. Despite our culture's obsession with health and wellbeing, we continue to promote alcohol as some kind of magical cure, even though it is everything but.

After having one too many drinks, Holly Whitaker made the decision to get treatment. This decision set her on a path that not only helped her get sober, but also highlighted the pernicious effects alcohol has on our culture, especially on the lives of women. Furthermore, she was unable to ignore the ways that alcohol businesses were effectively targeting women, just as the tobacco industry had done decades before. Driven by her own burgeoning feminism, she also came to the realisation that the recovery systems that are currently in use are antiquated, patriarchal, and inadequate for meeting the specific needs of women and other historically marginalised groups. Unlike the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, which teach that people must lose their egos and submit to a male conception of God, these groups' members instead need to develop a more profound awareness of who they are and take charge of their own lives. Holly felt called to establish a sober community with tools for anybody who is questioning their connection with alcohol in order to help others find their way, after she discovered a different path out of her own addiction. Her ensuing feminine-centric recovery programme shows us what is possible when we eliminate alcohol and dismantle our belief system surrounding it, concentrating on addressing the underlying factors that drive individuals to overindulge and providing the skills required to escape the cycle of addiction.

Quit Like a Woman, which is written in an approachable, humorous, and honest tone, is both a ground-breaking examination of drinking culture and a guide for giving up alcohol so that we may live our best lives without the crutch of drunkenness. You will never again see alcohol in the same manner.