{"id":231596,"date":"2024-01-08T04:51:36","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T09:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=231596"},"modified":"2024-01-08T11:38:58","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T16:38:58","slug":"all-the-books-to-read-while-youre-not-drinking-during-dry-january","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/all-the-books-to-read-while-youre-not-drinking-during-dry-january\/","title":{"rendered":"All the Books to Read While You\u2019re Not Drinking During Dry January"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is something comforting, in a drinking culture such as ours, to know that it won\u2019t seem weird to avoid wines and spirits in favor of soft drinks when January comes around. Alongside Sober October, Dry January has become a socially acceptable time to abstain, and it always makes me realize just how extreme our drinking culture is that we need this schedule to feel ok about not<\/em> wanting to drink. Having noticed this about myself last year, I began to realize how unconscious and automatic my habits had become, and how tied they were to relationships and social cues.<\/p>\n

Taking inspiration from Soberish <\/em><\/a>by Kayla Lyons, which promotes an attitude of \u2018a more mindful relationship to alcohol\u2019 and an awareness of how social drinking can enable unhealthy habits, I began abstaining and rethinking social relationships that were often entangled in addictive patterns of behavior.<\/p>\n

To this end, I started reading more books about drinking and addiction, and rereading novels that had shaped my own ideas about them over the years. Having written at length about patterns of self-destruction and escapism in my book The Fear<\/a><\/em>,<\/em> I understood the repetitive patterns of drinking as a reaction to trauma and anxiety already\u2014but I had underestimated the role of sociality and relationships in accentuating self-destructive behavior in the name of bonding. So follows a selection of books I have found enlightening in my own journey to a more soberish lifestyle\u2014and better relationships.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\"Ottessa<\/p>\n

I remember picking up a copy of Ottessa Moshfegh My Year of Rest and Relaxation<\/em><\/a> at my friend\u2019s flat in Glasgow, where I had escaped to for a weekend, as he read Nancy Mitford\u2019s The Pursuit of Love<\/em><\/a>. They were good companion pieces, and as I read Moshfegh\u2019s novel that first time, the link between a desire for intimacy and a desire for drink (and pills), revealed itself to me quite darkly. While Moshfegh\u2019s heroine is in one sense a total recluse, as she abstains from life itself for a year in order to reset after her mother\u2019s death, she is accompanied by her loyal and masochistic best friend throughout this journey. In this entanglement, the deep self-delusion of addiction reveals itself, and how that is connected and at times enabled by co-dependence. And yet, the characters just want to be loved, however absurd the circumstances, and they do in their way.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the classic 1980s novel, Bright Lights, Big City<\/em><\/a> by Jay MacInerney, we meet another social creature dismayed by grief. I read it as a teenager and this line always resonated\u2014\u201cYou keep thinking that with practice you will eventually get the knack of enjoying superficial encounters, that you will stop looking for the universal solvent, stop grieving. You will learn to compound happiness out of small increments of mindless pleasure.\u201d<\/p>\n

I took this novel as a kind of starting gun when I read it at fifteen, my father sick with cancer\u2014but when I return now, I see so much that is newly, sadly familiar. Another line, he says: \u201cYou will have to go slowly. You will have to learn everything all over again.\u201d And again, and again. And yet that realization is infectious and bonding; in reading this story, the common pain at the root of addiction is clarified, and that is the beginning of recovery.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On a similar note, it is always moving to read The Crack-Up<\/em><\/a> by F. Scott Fitzgerald which was published in Esquire Magazine<\/em><\/a> in 1936. A cautionary tale, if ever there was one, it opens thus:<\/p>\n

Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work\u2014the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside\u2014the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within\u2014that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick\u2014the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed.<\/p>\n

It is in this context of personal crisis that Fitzgerald meditates on fame and addiction, and in particular the gradual freefall of his \u201ccracking up\u201d as he puts it, after years of a very social falling apart, in which he wrote The Great Gatsby<\/a>, The Beautiful and Damned<\/a><\/em> and This Side of Paradise<\/a>.<\/em> As the characters struggled with self-destructive drinking habits and one another, so did the author; in this essay, one of his last, he reveals the subtle ways his own breakdown made itself evident too late. Though he ends on a positive note, a decision to start over, it is sadly too late\u2014Fitzgerald died at 44 from alcoholism, a few years before his wife Zelda died in a mental asylum that had caught fire.<\/p>\n

\"Anna<\/p>\n

At risk of seeming excessively gloomy, Anna Karenina<\/em><\/a> by Leo Tolstoy always springs to mind when I think seriously about bad habits and personal responsibility. Following Anna as she becomes completely intoxicated first by Count Vronsky and then, as his interest in her wains, an opium habit, Tolstoy contrasts Anna\u2019s trajectory with that of Kitty and Levin, who find in one another the means to build a happy marriage, a spiritual life, and a family.<\/p>\n

Though Kitty felt rebuked by Vronsky when he first ignored her, ultimately hers and Levin\u2019s life\u2014of hard work, faith and family\u2014is the better one. And yet, of course, I always loved Anna, and who cannot sympathize with her desire for romantic love, for passion, for excitement, even when such a life is impossibly unsustainable?<\/p>\n

But this is the cautionary tale to end all cautionary tales, and as time goes on, I give less of my heart to Anna\u2019s desperation, remembering how she abandons her own son in her stubborn need for rebellion and love in a society that won\u2019t let her have it. Anna\u2019s downfall is depicted as understandable, and she is deeply sympathetic, but Tolstoy also reveals the inescapable tragedy of her choices and the damage that her impossible desires thus cause. Always a humbling January read!<\/p>\n

\"the<\/p>\n

In some ways parallel to Tolstoy\u2019s depiction of Kitty and Levin embracing the goodness of the countryside, Amy Liptrot\u2019s memoir, The Outrun<\/em><\/a> is a beautiful and uplifting account of recovery\u2014this time as she returns to life in the remote Isle of Orkney after many lost years in London. Having also grown up in rural Scotland, this story always resonated with me, particularly the sense of needing to escape and then return home to a harsh but beautiful place.<\/p>\n

This Ragged Grace<\/em> by Octavia Bright\u00a0is another brilliant memoir, out last year, which also recounts the twin journeys to family \/ home, and to sobriety. Charting the author\u2019s impressive recovery from alcoholism as her father\u2019s health deteriorates with dementia, this is another grounding, important story of choosing life and family, even when it is painful.<\/p>\n

\"Jesmyn<\/p>\n

That said, family and home may also predetermine one\u2019s downfall. In\u00a0Men We Reaped<\/a><\/em> by Jesmyn Ward, the author tells the story of her own hometown\u2014DeLisle, Mississippi\u2014and how the deaths of her brother and four other young men close to her are fated by the racism and trauma that the community has experienced. Addiction is a part of this, and it is important to understand, as Ward so elegantly reveals, the structural issues at the root of addiction and mental health problems, rather than necessarily any individual moral failing.<\/p>\n

In Punch Me Up to The Gods<\/em><\/a> by Brian Broome, the author also confronts the role of racism and trauma in developing addiction as a young Black man, and therefore the role of society at large to protect vulnerable young people, rather than to damn them further. In<\/a> The Realm of Hungry Ghosts<\/a><\/em> by Gabor Mat\u00e9\u00a0is a wonderful book about the psychology of addiction as rooted in trauma and attachment issues, and it provides an excellent context with which to better understand the interplay of environment and individual behaviours. In All About Love<\/em><\/a>, meanwhile, bell hooks writes about forms of love, why \u201clove and abuse cannot co-exist\u201d and why ultimately “addiction makes love impossible.”<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

This is the tragedy I keep coming back to: that those who end up in the clutches of addiction most often simply want love, and relief from the pain of not having it. And yet, as bell hooks writes, and which seems evident from most of the books I\u2019ve listed here, it is impossible to be fully present to another person if you are consumed by something else, or simply the fear of trusting and connecting to another person, even without a substance. The sad irony is that we use alcohol and other drugs to help us connect to each other\u2014and it is encouraged by our culture\u2014but it damages us.<\/p>\n

I was at lunch with another writer recently, and we were talking about this\u2014how with all substances, the desire at the root of taking them is for intimacy\u2014to be with other people, and for a certain adventurous, escapist, joyful energy of connection. And if it is not for that<\/em> reason, then it is to numb the pain of being unable to find that connection. We all seek attachment, basically, and especially if we have not received enough of it before; how tragic then, that we choose a poison that will eventually tear us apart from those we might love.<\/p>\n

After we\u2019d spoken, I remembered a poem another writer had read me once, that I have been thinking of ever since: Remembering Elaine\u2019s<\/em> by Frederick Seidel<\/a>\u2014it captures the draw and tragedy of social drinking better than anything I\u2019ve read. If only we could remember each other, before we are gone, though\u2014look out for each other, before we are gone. That is one kind of love, and it\u2019s at least one to start the year on. It\u2019s at least a good intention.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Further reading: Wishful Drinking<\/em><\/a> by Carrie Fisher \u2022\u00a0Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man<\/em><\/a> by Bill Clegg \u2022\u00a0Dry<\/em><\/a> by Augusten Burroughs \u2022\u00a0Lit<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by Mary Carr \u2022 Drinking: A Love Story <\/em><\/a>by Caroline Knapp \u2022\u00a0The Urge<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Carl Fisher<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is something comforting, in a drinking culture such as ours, to know that it won\u2019t seem weird to avoid wines and spirits in favor of soft drinks when January comes around. Alongside Sober October, Dry January has become a socially acceptable time to abstain, and it always makes me realize just how extreme our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11265,"featured_media":231599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,43287,43070,43135],"tags":[6680,85919,3089,92799,338],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/dry-january.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-Yfq","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231596"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}