Drinking
Subtitle: a love story
By: Caroline Knapp
Publisher: Dial Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 258
ISBN-13: 9780385315517; 9780385315548
Subjects: Alcoholics; Recovering alcoholics; Personal Narratives; Alcoholism; Biography; Case studies
Description: "It happened this way: I fell in love and then, because the love was ruining everything I cared about, I had to fall out." So begins Drinking: A Love Story, journalist Caroline Knapp's brave and powerful memoir of her twenty years as a functioning alcoholic. Knapp writes that she loved liquor the way she loved bad men and, like all tragic love stories, hers is a tale of seduction and betrayal, a testament to the alluring but ultimately destructive powers of addiction. Fifteen million Americans a year are afflicted with the disease of alcoholism. Five million of them are women. Caroline Knapp, for example, started drinking at age fourteen. She drank through her years at an Ivy League college, through an award-winning career as a lifestyle editor and columnist. Publicly she was a dutiful daughter, attentive friend, sophisticated professional. Privately she was drinking herself into oblivion, trapped in love relationships that continued to undermine her self-esteem - until a series of personal crises forced her to confront and ultimately break free of the "liquid armor" she'd used to shield herself from the complicated battles of growing up. Caroline Knapp's ruthless self-examination, moral courage, and singular ability as a writer inform this remarkable memoir with many new insights about alcoholism, but more important, with many profound insights about life.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.

Also issued online.
Table of contents: title: Love; title: Double Life I; title: Destiny; title: Hunger; title: In Vodka Veritas; title: Sex; title: Drinking Alone; title: Addiction; title: Substitution; title: Denial; title: Giving Over; title: A Glimpse; title: Double Life II; title: Hitting Bottom; title: Help; title: Healing.