Holly Whitaker’s Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol is a unique addition to modern addiction literature. In her work, Whitaker candidly describes her own addiction to alcohol while analyzing alcohol’s role in modern society, arguing that sobriety is the best way for individuals to reclaim their health and resist contributing to the unethical actions of alcohol companies. Whitaker’s vulnerable descriptions of her life as an addict and as a newly sober woman imbue her work with the tone of a memoir. She reflects on how she developed her dependency on alcohol, and why she continued returning to it even as she worried that it could be compromising her health, relationships, and self-esteem.

Women’s contributions to this genre continue to grow as women bring their experiences with alcohol to the page. Caroline Knapp’s Drinking: A Love Story, in which Knapp reflects on two decades of alcohol addiction, was a bestseller when it was published in 1996. More recently, other women authors have struck a chord with the public with their reflections on addiction. Sarah Hepola’s 2016 Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, which was praised by critics for its humor and honesty, reveals Hepola’s process of quitting alcohol and creating a new life in sobriety. While many of this genre’s stories end in a successful resolution to addiction, author Holly Whitaker also found inspiration in works by women who continue to grapple with their addictions. She cites memoirs such as Cat Marnell’s How to Murder Your Life and Roxane Gay’s Hunger as influences, lauding their honesty about their ongoing addictions, which remain unresolved by the end of their memoirs.

Unlike these memoirs, however, Whitaker’s work uses her experiences to try to help the reader change their own relationship with alcohol. This aspect of her work transforms Quit Like a Woman from pure memoir to a self-help text as well. The author combines the best advice she received from self-help books on addiction and repackages it for her readers. The first crucial literary influence she cites is Allen Carr’s famous work The Easy Way to Control Alcohol. Whitaker uses Carr’s wisdom to coach her readers to stop drinking for good, and just as Carr advises, to “never question the decision” (118).

Whitaker also uses the latest in neuroscience as a basis for her self-help advice. By focusing on alcohol addiction as a learned behavior and explaining the neurological process behind these powerful habits, Whitaker’s work is similar to other self-help books on habit formation, such as Dr. Judson Brewer’s Unwinding Anxiety, James Clear’s Atomic Habits, and B.J. Fogg’s Tiny Habits. Whitaker, who does not have a research or medical background, uses scientific sources to ground her arguments in scientific findings. She cites Dr. Brewer’s work, The Craving Mind, as an important influence, as it taught her how to systematically use meditation and self-awareness to observe and overcome her cravings. She paraphrases this process in great detail so that the reader can try it, too. By positioning herself as both a fellow addict and a recovery coach, the author gains authority from her lived experience and effectively passes on scientific insights to the reader.