Sobriety

Tuesday

Arabella Byrne

Against abstinence-based approaches to sobriety

It would be impossible for me to review Katie Herzog’s Drink Your Way Sober without disclosing the central fact of my adult life: I have been sober and in Alcoholics Anonymous for more than 15 years. And while I am not an out-and-out evangelist for AA and its notorious Twelve Step method, it is, nonetheless, the movement that I credit with my survival. Not so for journalist – and addict – Katie Herzog. Herzog has all the serial-relapser energy you would expect from the addict who has forsworn AA Part memoir, part guidebook, Drink Your Way Sober is an impassioned – and at times, angry – argument that abstinence-based approaches to sobriety are doomed to fail.

Sober

Thursday

Teresa Mull

What’s behind all the buzz about non-alcoholic beer?

There’s nothing quite like the third swig of a gin and tonic at the end of a long summer’s day. Or of an Old-Fashioned combating Old Man Winter’s chill. The bite on the tongue. The slow burn in the belly. The gradual easing of emotional and physical tension. Except for the hangovers. There’s nothing quite like those, either. As I — sigh — age, I’ve developed a relationship with alcohol that has become increasingly love-hate: I love it, it hates me. A slight intolerance to booze, German/Irish heritage notwithstanding, has always given me a rosy flush that on round three deepens to an unflattering scarlet that could be mistaken for theatrical rouge.

non-alcoholic