This is so honest it gets uncomfortable sometimes. She has a great sense of introspection and insight, so you understand what she and a lot of addicts go through. At first you don't like her, because she talks about all the things her family was doing wrong when she was a kid (which was horrible, but still); or what her man was doing to make her cheat, etc. But then she realises, as a lot of addicts that want to stop, that is her fault and the substance that anesthetize the shame and guilt of her self-destruction. Apparently an addict hits rock bottom when they can't medicate that shame anymore, it's not really losing everything (material or relationship wise), which I didn't know. It can happen at any stage of addiction, even when you're barely starting, depends on the person and their psychosocial enviroment. An addiction stalls out your growth, stopping is literally deciding finally to become an adult, so I understand why it is so difficult and scary. My uncle is an alcoholic. He is in his 60s now, and haven't found the will to stop. Undertanding what maybe is going through his head, and what was his childhood like (and he doesn't stop talking about it) makes it even sadder, but what you gonna do. ( )

Read this because I married an alcoholic. ( )

Here's what I wrote in 2013 about this read: "An anatomy of a woman (high-functioning) alcholic. The woman friend written about in Let's Take the Long Way Home. Got a bit long and discouraging but has a fine reputation as really, really helpful to many readers. Glad to have read it." Quotations in the comments section are my exact kindle highlights. ( )

I feel a bit uncomfortable saying that a book depicting the incredible amount of pain and suffering caused by the author's struggle with alcoholism a real page turner. I mean what does that say about me ? But that's exactly what reading this book was, I simply gobbled it up. Caroline Knapp's struggle started at an early age and although as she said, she was a functioning alcoholic and never did anything really horrible to anyone, there was a brutal honesty about the harm she did to herself. Caroline used alcohol to hide from her demons but when she finally gave it up and faced her demons head on, she displayed amazing amount of bravery in revealing not only to herself, but to her readers as well, all the many many mistakes she made while under it's spell. Like I said a real page turner. ( )

Incisive dissection lf the motivations of a well-off, successful, "high-functioning alcoholic." Especially interesting is her understanding of her relationship with her father. She commits to AA and finds strength in the shared struggle, but makes no real claim for belief in a higher power. ( )

Beautifully written. A lot of her words hit close to home, having alcoholism in my family and seeing it up close and personal. ( )

Knapp's memoir, novel?, is accessible and poignant but the thematic structure of the book lends itself to circular and pedantic reflections on her alcoholism. I didn't get enough of her to really care about her plight or the struggles of her family. But her observations on the obfuscation of the self and avoidance of pain in drinking gave me much to ponder as I consider my own relationship with alcohol.

It's not just drinking. We can fall in love in so many ways - some ways destroy us, some ways free us. This book helped me look at this razor edge of "on" which we court in our culture. ( )

A very difficult book to get through. Caroline Knapp holds nothing back. Recommended for anyone with a "drinking problem." ( )

Caroline Knapp's "Drinking: A Love Story" is an absorbing account of her own years-long experience with alcoholism. The book is engaging, whether someone has never tasted alcohol or whether someone, too, struggles with substance dependence. I remember feeling sad when I learned Ms. Knapp passed ~ 16 years ago. So much to offer ... . ( )

I read the first fifty pages and skimmed the next fifty, and aside from identifying a couple of people of my acquaintance as high-functioning alcoholics, I found nothing terribly gripping or even interesting about this memoir. Maybe I quit before it got good, but I'm okay with that possibility. ( )

I wanted to love Drinking: A Love Story, I really did, for a lot of reasons:

• A friend lent it to me with a glowing re
  view and she generally has great taste.


• I am a recovering alcoholic and am generally interested in books about recovery.


• I like a good memoir.

All of these reasons should have led to a knockout reading experience but for this seemingly winning equation just didn't add up for me.

I can see why many people would love this book, and why it would be important to many people. The author is a drunk and the memoir follows her through the last few years of her drinking into the first few years of sobriety.

I appreciated the way Knapp compared getting sober with ending a relationship. It was true for me - I had a much stronger relationship with alcohol than I did with any human being the last few years of my drinking. And even though it was literally killing me, and I knew I would get nothing out of my life if I didn't quit, I still grieved the loss of it. I imagine it's similar to someone getting out of a bad marriage. They know it's bad, they know it's better to be out of it, but that doesn't mean it's easy or that their feelings aren't complicated. Knapp did a good job of portraying that particular part of getting sober, which, in my experience, is one of the more baffling things for non-alcoholics to understand.

The writing was fine. It wasn't amazing but it didn't really get in the way either. When I finished the book and researched Knapp I was not surprised to learn that she'd written extensively for many women's magazines. Her writing had a sort of cheesy, overly simplified, repetitive quality that didn't make me want to throw the book across the room or anything, but wasn't particularly appealing either.

I can see why many people found this book fascinating and insightful, but it wasn't for me. I've been sober for a little over three years and the entire time I read this I kept wondering if I would have felt differently about this book if I'd read it in my first year of sobriety. To me it was just another alcoholic telling their story. I hear stories exactly like this every week and they're important for me to hear, and I care deeply for the stories I hear, but when reading cold words on a page it just didn't get to me.

I also wasn't sure how I felt about her writing the thing in the first place. People who aren't familiar with Alcoholics Anonymous often think that the Anonymous part means we can't disclose the fact that we're in recovery. My interpretation is that it means A) we must respect the anonymity of others, which basically means if I see someone from a meeting out in the wild I won't let whoever they're with, or I'm with, for that matter, know they're in the program and B) as the traditions state, "remain anonymous at the level of press, radio, and film." I think writing a book about it falls under "press?" That's my feeling, at least.

As I understand it, the reason that tradition exists is because there are about a billion different ways for people to interpret AA - and not a single one of them is correct. One of the strengths of the program is that everyone can work their program the way they see fit. When a person in the public eye starts talking about what AA is like, they're not actually talking about what it's like - they're talking about what it's like for them. This is problematic, in my opinion. I don't like one person giving AA lessons to the world at large, which is largely what this book felt like to me.

So! As you can see, my own personal biases played a big role in my feelings on this book. If it's someone's first experience hearing the story of a person getting sober then it may be more interesting. I think if I'd read it in my first year or so of sobriety, when I wanted as many stories as I could get, it may have had more of an impact. As it was, it felt tedious to get through this thing and I was grateful when I finally finished it. ( )

Journalist Caroline Knapp grew up in a well-to-do but emotionally distant home, close but never comfortable with her psychoanalyst father. She relates the progression of her alcoholism, her overlapping and related addictive patterns (anorexia and body image, unhealthy relationships and infidelity), and her eventual recovery through AA.

It is difficult to ready any story about a fall from grace, especially one written as honestly and bluntly as Caroline Knapp's. The story winds its way around different out-of-control drinking; when Knapp drank, why she thought she drank so much, the people she affected with her drinking, all the denials along the way. At times her stories seemed repetitive and meandering but that perception comes from the why of it all. Knapp was clearly in pain and had trouble rationalizing her rage. She brought two points home: you don't need to have suffered a trauma to become addicted to anything and once you recognize your problem, your addiction is never again a normalized behavior. In the world of alcohol, most people think nothing of having a cocktail with friends, a beer after work. All of that became off limits to Knapp once she accepted her addiction. It is clear Knapp had an addictive personality. She was drawn to obsessions and performed rituals while drinking, rituals about food consumption to the point of anorexia, rituals in how she fought with her boyfriends. Even after sobriety, Knapp was drawn to obsessions concerning cleanliness and being constantly aware of how large a role alcohol plays in our society. Even the words "champagne bunch" grated on her abstinence. In the end, Knapp was resolved to take one day at a time. She couldn't set large goals for herself while her drinking was larger than her resolve. She was smart to know that every day was a major victory. Her story ends unresolved but hopeful. ( )

Well written story of the author's descent into alcoholism and her achievement of sobriety. Great insights about the dynamics of addiction and of recovery through institutional treatment and active and continuing participation in Alcoholics Anonymous. ( )

Caroline Knapp was a gifted writer, and the story of her struggle with alcohol is beautifully told. ( )

Caroline gives her story of addiction to alcohol moving toward recovery. It is well written and gives some good incite for those that struggle to understand addiction or how a person can become addicted without past trauma or a genetic link. My only critique is it is 89% drunkalogue. I don't mind drunkalogues but the intriguing journey is that of recovery, which she glosses over and spends very little talking about besides saying it was painful at first and has changed her life for the better. ( )

Caroline Knapp's memoir of alcoholism is moving and, like Pete Hamill's memoir, both humorously self-aware and hard-nosed in examining the writer's addiction to alcohol. Otherwise, this is a different book and one which has inspired me to reexamine my own attitudes toward addiction, addicts and the ways I cope with emotions. ( )

Very powerful memoir by a high-functioning alcoholic in which she relates her drinking history and her first couple years of sobriety. Knapp was an excellent writer, and a brave woman. ( )

A thorough and honest look at one woman's addiction, it's roots and consequences. Not exactly an easy book to get through. As she pointed out, the path of an addict can be very tedious, in spite of the drama inherent in it. This book was much the same. ( )

Fantastic. ( )

This is great reading for anyone involved in any way with an alcoholic, and who isn't? Caroline Knapp says so many pertinent things: (at the beginning of her drinking) I loved the way drink made me feel, and I loved its special power of deflection, its ability to shift my focus away from my own awareness of self and onto something else, something less painful than my own feelings. - Alcoholism is a disease of more (I've heard that from other alcoholics, they can never get enough. There's no end point to their drinking). - When you're actively alcoholic, you don't bother to solve problems, even petty ones, in part because you have no faith in your ability to make changes. You get so used to being a passive participant in your own life... - (on deciding to go into rehab) I felt like I was giving up the one link I had to peace and solace, my truest friend, my lover. (or as Norman Mailer said) sobriety kills off all the little "capillaries of bonhomie." - (at the end of her drinking career) My life was so woefully embarrassing. It was embarrassing and tedious and exhausting and in the end, what was the point? You drink to avoid those painful choices and you wake up in the morning and all those choices are still with you, still unfaced; all those unresolved problems are hanging around your neck like pieces of lead, weighing you down, keeping you from moving forward. - ...thinking or acting alcoholically...the search for an external solution ..."My husband is acting like an idiot," a woman said at a meeting. "I have to remember that the solution is not "Get a new husband." What an excellent book to read, especially this time of the year. ( )

A gripping and sensitive account of one woman's struggle with alcohol. The book is honest, unvarnished, and frank. I couldn't put it down. ( )

I've had the good fortune not to be touched by the addiction of anyone close to me, but I was very impressed by Knapp's memoir of her drinking problem. She was a terrific writer. ( )

got bored with the book. was sort of repetitive. ( )