- Quitter A Memoir Of Drinking Relapse And Recovery
- Quitter A Memoir Of Drinking Relapse And Recovery Pdf
In this chapter from her book, Erica C. Barnett describes the point when her life became a shrinking circle
A startlingly frank memoir of one woman's struggles with alcoholism and recovery, with essential new insights into addiction and treatment Erica C. How to run c codes in visual studio. Barnett had her first sip of alcohol when she was thirteen, and she quickly developed a taste for drinking to oblivion with her friends. In her late twenties, her addiction became inescapable.
By Erica C. Barnett, Fri., July 10, 2020
Quitter A Memoir Of Drinking Relapse And Recovery
'I didn't start out good at drinking; like a lot of skills I picked up in my life, I practiced until I got the hang of it.'
That admission comes early in Erica C. Barnett's Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery, just after the author has described hitting 'rock bottom. The fourth or fifth one.' That day involved downing two bottles of wine on the way to clean out her desk at the magazine she'd just been fired from, pissing off a friend who had driven Barnett to detox the week before, downing still more wine on the way home, running through a driving Seattle rain, doing a face-plant on the concrete sidewalk, and eventually blacking out.
That Barnett is willing to open her book this way – candid about her failings, unsparing in the details – speaks volumes about her honesty regarding addiction to alcohol. It can overtake a person's life, debase a person, drag a person into depths of disgraceful behavior; I'm living proof, she tells us.
Quitter takes us from Barnett's first drink in Sugar Land at age 13 through her last drink in Seattle 24 years later. Along the way, Barnett takes many more drinks, along with reporting gigs at the Texas Observer, Seattle Weekly, The Stranger, and, yes, The Austin Chronicle. She wrote for the News section from 1998-2001, and in Quitter, the paper appears as the reason she left Austin for the Great Northwest.
Barnett remains there to this day and is currently writing about addiction, housing, poverty, and drug policy at her blog, The C Is for Crank, as well as writing for local and national publications such as Grist, The Huffington Post, and Seattle Magazine.
- A journalist who battles alcoholism actually went back and used her reporter skills to research her memoir-resulting in a book that teaches you something about the process of alcoholism, treatment, relapse, and recovery.
- In 'Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery,' the Seattle journalist gets real about the struggles of addiction and overcoming shame.
– Robert Faires
Chapter 24: A Shrinking Circle
The reality of daily life during my last several years of drinking wasn't messy – it was banal, the way a terminal disease that drags on for years can start to feel routine. I drank, I went to work (or didn't), I threw up a lot, and struggled to remember to eat, and drank some more until it was time to go to bed and wake up early the next morning to do it all over again. It was like I was drawing a circle around my life that, every day, drew a little bit smaller, until one day, there wasn't much left outside the line that ran from my front door to the bus stop, the liquor store, the grocery store, and back. On many weekends, when I had enough alcohol in the house to last until Sunday, and the only distinction that marked the hours was waking and sleeping, that circle shrunk further, until it was barely larger than my bed and the 100 sq. ft. of popcorn ceiling above it.
Weekdays required a bit more effort – more makeup, less napping, a deeper level of subterfuge – but the central obsession was the same. Where can I get liquor on the way to work? How can I make sure no one catches me drinking at the office? What excuse can I make to head out for more wine mid-afternoon? How can I get rid of Josh at the end of the day so I can grab a bottle before I get on the bus? How much do I need to force myself to eat so that I won't be as violently sick tomorrow as I was today? What stays down better – a sandwich or a salad?
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Incredimail 2 5 serial key. If you ever hear someone accuse addicts of being lazy, please correct them: Addicts are some of the most industrious people in the world. Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backward and in heels – well, we do everything normal people do, except distracted and impaired. (Oh, and worse. We do everything worse, too.) Susan Cheever, the daughter of the alcoholic author John Cheever, wrote that alcoholics' behavior is often characterized by 'a pattern of self-destruction combined with compensatory brilliance,' and while I was far from brilliant in those last, unsettled years of heavy drinking, I got by well enough to convince my friends not to stage an intervention and my bosses not to fire me. (Well, until they did.) I still churned out copy, still went through the motions of doing interviews, still turned in magazine columns and features more or less on time. And if the person I was interviewing expressed concern for my health, or my story was riddled with typos and five days late, I could handle the criticism – all I had to do was apologize, say I was feeling under the weather, and drink until it wasn't my fault anymore.
When I look back at the two or three years I spent doing virtually nothing outside of work – seeing my boyfriend only when I felt well enough to leave my apartment, no writing, no hobbies or vacations or projects – I think, How did I waste so much time? And then I remember: I was always busy – busy maintaining my supply, busy coming up with lies to buy time and get myself off the hook, busy doing the emotional and mental heavy lifting it takes to be a full-time alcoholic in full-blown denial.
By the fall of 2014, though, I started to sense that a change was coming. I was sick all the time, every moment I was awake, and no one seemed particularly sympathetic. Josh was sick of pulling me out of the office to ask me if I'd been drinking. He was sick of getting calls late at night. And he was sick of telling his girlfriend he would be right back, that something had come up with Erica and he had to deal with it. At some point, I had appointed my best friend, Josh, as my lifeline, and I expected him to drop everything he was doing to pay attention to me, or come rescue me from whatever predicament I had gotten myself into. 'My parents don't love me and they're driving me crazy and I want to shove chopsticks in my eyes!' I sobbed from my childhood bed in Mississippi. 'A mugger .. just stole .. my computer!' I wailed, as he tiptoed out of a press conference and whispered, 'Have you called the police?' For their whole relationship, his girlfriend, Heather, had known me only as a black hole of need, the person who was always in a crisis and needed constant attention. You know that friend who always turns every misunderstanding into a telenovela-level drama, to the point that you start screening her calls? Light that chick's hair on fire, throw in a fifth of vodka and a decade's worth of resentments, and that was me.
Quitter A Memoir Of Drinking Relapse And Recovery Pdf
From Quitter by Erica C. Barnett, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright 2020 by Erica C. Barnett.
Description
Barnett's prose style is brassy and cleareyed, with echoes of Anne Lamott. --Beth Macy, The New York Times Book ReviewEmotionally devastating and self-aware, this cautionary tale about substance abuse is a worthy heir to Cat Marnell's How to Murder Your Life. --Publishers Weekly (starred review)A startlingly frank memoir of one woman's struggles with alcoholism and recovery, with essential new insights into addiction and treatmentErica C. Barnett had her first sip of alcohol when she was thirteen, and she quickly developed a taste for drinking to oblivion with her friends. In her late twenties, her addiction became inescapable. Volatile relationships, blackouts, and unsuccessful stints in detox defined her life, with the vodka bottles she hid throughout her apartment and offices acting as both her tormentors and closest friends. By the time she was in her late thirties, Erica Barnett had run the gauntlet of alcoholism. She had recovered and relapsed time and again, but after each new program or detox center would find herself far from rehabilitated. Rock bottom, Barnett writes, is a lie. It is always possible, she learned, to go lower than your lowest point. She found that the terms other alcoholics used to describe the trajectory of their addiction--rock bottom and moment of clarity--and the mottos touted by Alcoholics Anonymous, such as let go and let God and you're only as sick as your secrets--didn't correspond to her experience and could actually be detrimental. With remarkably brave and vulnerable writing, Barnett expands on her personal story to confront the dire state of addiction in America, the rise of alcoholism in American women in the last century, and the lack of rehabilitation options available to addicts. At a time when opioid addiction is a national epidemic and one in twelve Americans suffers from alcohol abuse disorder, Quitter is essential reading for our age and an ultimately hopeful story of Barnett's own hard-fought path to sobriety.
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Reviews
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) 'A Seattle-based political reporter recounts her tumultuous, nearly deadly dance with the bottle. . . . Barnett rises to the challenge with a witty, self-deprecating, sometimes snide voice. . . .If you're in the mood for a well-written, relatable, rock-bottom recovery memoir, this will hit the spot.'
--Kirkus Reviews
'I can't think of another memoir that captures the nightmare of drinking relapse like this one. Erica Barnett's tale is brutal, maddening, and beautiful. Quitter will give hope to anyone afraid they can't ever get this thing. Hang in there. You just might.'
--Sarah Hepola, New York Times bestselling author of Blackout '[Barnett] paints a grotesque portrait of the horror show that is alcoholism with great skill and style. I tore through this book.'
--Cat Marnell, New York Times bestselling author of How to Murder Your Life
'Quitter is all these things: a beautifully told story of one woman's descent into darkness; a rigorously researched exploration of the causes and treatments of alcohol abuse; a furious howl of pain. Erica C. Barnett has written a female story of addiction that moves beyond clichés and accepted truths. I loved this book, in all its raging glory.'
--Claire Dederer, author of Love and Trouble 'Barnett writes with seismic clarity on the baffling nature of the early morning vodka trip and the anguish and relief it produces in equal measure. This book understands what it is like to fail but have that last bit of hope. Remarkable writing on a disease that effects so many. Quitter is the new manual for those seeking a recovered life.'
--Erin Lee Carr, author of All That You Leave Behind; director of I Love You, Now Dieand At the Heart of Gold'Erica Barnett's Quitter is a harrowing, deeply truthful account of her long journey through alcoholism and repeated relapse--an addiction consequence so common that Barnett calls it 'almost inevitable, ' yet one to which most treatment methodologies pay scant attention. Barnett doesn't flinch in showing the impact of her ever-worsening relapses on her health, career, and even her most steadfast relationships, and she holds herself to account while also making it clear how the treatment system failed her. In addition to being a riveting, suspenseful read, Quitter will also start important conversations about how addicts can best be helped at all stages of the recovery cycle. An essential addition to literature of addiction.'
--Kristi Coulter, author of Nothing Good Can Come From This 'Erica Barnett's Quitter is an impeccably researched, long-overdue examination of America's billion-dollar addiction industry and its decidedly mixed record of success. Drawing from her own painful experience in countless hospitals, rehabs and treatment centers, Barnett bravely tackles the limitations and sacred cows of the 12-step-movement while also acknowledging the vital role it has played in rescuing thousands of addicts and alcoholics from desperate cycles of despair. In her hard-won quest for sobriety she discovers that it's possible for even the most hopeless addicts to recover if they are willing to give up pre-conceived notions about what recovery looks like and how to get there.'
--Maer Roshan, author of Courtney Comes Clean
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