Not Drinking Tonight: A Guide to Creating A Sober Life You Love (2022) Amanda E. White, LPC
Amanda E. White, LPC combines personal experience, research, and an amalgamation of client stories to expand the spectrum beyond a rigid mindset of recovery or sobriety. There’s more nuance when exploring one’s [individual] relationship with alcohol that often gets buried under culturally constructed values, expectations, and/or stigma. The goal of this book is to provide the reader with an honest education about alcohol (rather than successful marketing strategies to encourage sales) so you can make a more informed choice (or consent) about how you incorporate the use of alcohol in your life and/or bring to light ways you may be utilizing alcohol (or other addictive behaviors) to mask the underlying distress of various forms of traumas, distress, and/or other limitations (and of course, the author then encourages the reader to seek professional help as needed).
The book reads like a novel and feels more accessible and engaging than other “self-help” or psychoeducational books. The reader is able to gently explore their relationship with alcohol as mirrored in the stories of the characters of 3 women. We are able to follow and bear witness as they journey and transition across three main phases:
Finding out why you drink
Healing your relationship with alcohol
Building a sober life you love
Along the way, we are presented with a significant amount of psychoeducation from the therapist dialogue and hopefully resonate our own stories/experiences in those exemplified by the characters. With these new insights, we may become better prepared to explore our own relationship with alcohol and make steps to adjust, alter, and/or eliminate use of alcohol altogether as needed. While the author does state that the book is geared toward the experience of women’s relationships with alcohol, it does not exclude anyone else from gaining new or important insights from its pages.
How did I hear about this book: I follow the author’s IG account (@therapyforwomen) and saw a post about the book.
Would I recommend it to colleagues: Absolutely
Would I recommend this to clients: Absolutely
How do I apply this content to my work: My specialty is the treatment of co-occurring trauma/addiction (and any variation thereof), so this book speaks directly to my work/my client population. Additionally, I felt totally aligned with the author’s approach and the gentle transition across the three phases. And even despite all of the training I’ve had, I still learned a lot from reading this book—whether it was new information altogether or just a fresh perspective on a familiar topic. I think it can be a great book to refer to clients (or even family members, because I include them in my niche population) to get more information and to be able to see themselves in the stories of these other women can make approaching this topic more accessible. I’ve mentioned before, but using books/other people’s stories can be a great way to titrate the exploration as client/therapist are building rapport and/or for clients who have decreased capacities to tolerate the distress of vulnerability.
Disclaimers: These reviews are based on my own personal experience reading these books and do not reflect on the book’s author or publisher. I have not received any commissions or other incentives to promote my reviews. My reviews express my own unbiased opinions.
