The author reveals how, shortly after giving birth to a child she adored, she drank herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide before a spiritual awakening led her to sobriety.

Fifteen million Americans a year are plagued with alcoholism. Five million of them are women. Many of them, like Caroline Knapp, started in their early teens and began to use alcohol as "liquid armor," a way to protect themselves against the difficult realities of life. In this extraordinarily candid and revealing memoir, Knapp offers important insights not only about alcoholism, but about life itself and how we learn to cope with it.
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"A transformative work showing that sometimes the recovery is more gripping than the addiction. With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and reportage, [this book] turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head, demonstrating that the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about...

"A pediatric oncologist and palliative care physician, Dr. Adam B. Hill, suffers stress and disillusionment with the culture of medicine, leading to alcoholism, depression and suicidal thoughts. Then while in recovery from active addiction, he loses a mentor to suicide, revealing the extent of the burnout epidemic in the medical field. By sharing his harrowing story, Dr. Hill shows how this problem manifests, considers ways to address it, and confronts...

Striving for perfection in her life, Dana Bowman has the startling realization that recovery is not only about the alcohol.

"All the Way tells the story of someone who has travelled far from home to realize a dream, someone who has known glory and cheering crowds, but also the demons of despair. It is the searing, honest tale of a young man who has risen to every challenge and nearly fallen short in the toughest game of all, while finding a way to draw strength from his community and heritage, and giving back to it as well"--Www.amazon.com.