Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol

Whitaker reveals that her daily rituals of drinking tea, meditating, and dancing to fun music help her to get through the day with a positive mindset. Planning ahead, committing to a routine, creating a meditation space, and turning off one’s phone are all rituals that encourage healthy habits. Everyone should consider what their “joy practice” will be; for Whitaker, it is dancing.

The author explains that rituals are not just for the morning and building healthy routines in the workday is essential for overcoming habits around alcohol. Breath breaks, healthy snacks, positive mantras, and strong boundaries are essential to managing stress and cravings. Establishing a new evening ritual is also crucial, especially for people who tend to drink after work. To overcome her vulnerabilities at this difficult time of day, Whitaker engages in relaxing practices like calming music, scented baths, meditating, yoga, running, and dancing. Over time, these practices became automatic, and Whitaker learned how to be alone with herself while sober.

Building a “toolbox” of proven strategies can boost confidence in one’s ability to manage cravings and create new habits. The author made a spreadsheet of “tools” to help her overcome difficult moments, ranging from little comforts like coffee and tea to sensory experiences like essential oils and massage. By picking from the list in times of crisis, people can feel prepared and empowered to thoughtfully overcome their latest craving.

Next, the author urges the reader to “engage directly with cravings” by paying attention to the bodily sensations they have when they are distressed or want to drink alcohol (310). By simply observing feelings instead of creating a narrative around them, one can manage the brain’s instinct to ruminate on bad experiences and move on. In Judson Bewer’s book The Craving Mind, he outlines a good response to cravings with the acronym RASINS: Recognizing it, Allowing it to happen, rejecting the impulse to create a Story, Investigating it by being curious, Name the Sensations by labelling them out loud. The RASINS process promotes deep learning about oneself, which “breaks the cycle of cause and effect” inherent in addiction (315).

Whitaker believes that everyone has an inner child, and negative childhood experiences can, if left unaddressed, become wounds that people carry their whole lives. Whitaker’s strained relationship with her father, who abandoned the family during her childhood, was a trigger for her addictions, as she used alcohol, eating, and cannabis to escape the uncomfortable emotions that arose when she dealt with him. For Whitaker, her journey of sobriety began when she admitted to herself that she was carrying hurts that stemmed from childhood and was not functioning well. This revelation meant that she could begin to care for her inner child and nurture herself instead of pretending everything was fine.

First, people must recognize the role of trauma in their lives and how it impacts their mental health. Traumas often affect people both mentally and physically and sometimes cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Whitaker argues that talk therapy alone is often not effective at addressing the physical effects of trauma and recommends eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), the emotional freedom technique (EFT), and somatic experiencing (SE). The author urges the reader to explore meditation, which she calls “the lifeblood of recovery” (331). Similarly, yoga and breathwork tend to incorporate meditative traditions and can have physical and mental benefits.

For Whitaker, talk therapy was an important aspect of her recovery, and she recommends that people shop around to find the right therapist for them. This daunting and vulnerable aspect of recovery can be scary, but it is important. Clients should expect to “interview” their therapist to learn more about their approach and experience.

Next, the author tackles nutrition and lifestyle choices, arguing that many people with alcohol addictions unknowingly have hormonal imbalances, blood sugar issues, or brain chemistry problems that are spurring their cravings and causing other health issues. When in recovery, people might not necessarily feel any better, as these imbalances persist without the right nutrition. It is normal for recovering addicts to experience difficulties like insomnia, painful periods, exhaustion, and weight gain, and planning a new approach to nutrition and lifestyle helps manage these potential problems. 

Whitaker lists several practices she follows: sleeping 7-8 hours a night; eating regularly and prioritizing proteins and good fats; hydrating; exercising; and eating whole foods. She concludes the chapter by acknowledging that life problems can feel insurmountable, but by tackling the worst things first, such as alcohol addiction, people will be in a better place to heal other areas of their lives.

Whitaker laments that many people, especially those in recovery, have a rigid ideal of what it means to commit to being sober. She regards these people as the “Sober Illuminati” and recalls how unhelpful their unsolicited advice and judgment were to her when she was in the early days of her sobriety. She asserts that by maintaining a perfectionistic image of sobriety, such as eliminating all “drugs” like caffeine, nicotine, and cannabis, people like this are discouraging other addicts. Whitaker argues that regarding sobriety in this idealistic way sometimes shames people who have come far in their alcohol addiction recovery but are still healing from other dependencies.

While our culture usually regards failure as a part of the learning process, this grace is usually not extended to people recovering from alcohol addiction, whose relapses are regarded more judgmentally. Whitaker argues that people should expect to experience some failures on their sobriety journey, just as they would at learning any other skill. These relapses must be understood as learning opportunities. Whitaker appreciates the saying “One day at a time,” as it gives people a manageable goal to focus on rather than feeling overwhelmed by the goal of never drinking again.

The author argues that there are too many examples of happy post-recovery stories and not enough authentic memoirs about the active struggle against addiction. She points to Roxane Gay’s Hunger and Cat Marnell’s How to Murder Your Life as rare examples of honest personal stories of ongoing addiction. She feels that memoirs such as these help to show that recovery is not a simple process, and perfection is not the end goal.

Whitaker puzzles over the fact that when she finally publicly shared her ongoing sobriety journey, people reached out with unsolicited advice, concerned that she was not in a formal AA program or rehab. She attributes this to society’s history of dictating women’s actions and the sexist belief that women should not make decisions for themselves. She encourages women to use their intuition about the best process for them rather than feeling pressured to enroll in a particular program.

The author connects social pressure around sobriety to broader sexist trends in society. She points to Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court as an example of people being more willing to believe or excuse a man than a woman, even when he was under the influence of alcohol at the time. Whitaker concludes her chapter by reminding the reader that if a certain program doesn’t work for them, that isn’t necessarily their fault, and they should keep exploring what works for them.