“Why You Drink and How To Stop” by Veronica Valli
Welcome to Beach House Center for Recovery’s Monthly Book Club! Each month, a member of our community recommends a book that inspired them, changed their life, helped a loved one through a tough time, or is simply too helpful to overlook.
This month, Kelly Fitzgerald recommends “Why You Drink and How To Stop” by Veronica Valli.
Kelly Fitzgerald is a person in long-term recovery from a substance use disorder, which to her means she hasn’t had a drink or a drug since May 7, 2013. She is a writer based in Southwest Florida best known for her personal blog The Adventures of a Sober Señorita where she writes about her life and adventures in sobriety.
How did you hear about the book?
I believe I found it in a Google search for “why people drink” in my early sobriety.
Who is the book’s intended audience?
Anyone struggling with alcohol issues and who want to find peace
Is there a chapter or passage that is particularly meaningful to you? Can you briefly describe it?
I really enjoyed the whole book, but I love the passage in Chapter 1 where Veronica describes alcoholism as an internal condition. “It isn’t alcohol that kill alcoholics. It’s the lies they tell themselves in order to keep doing what they are doing. If they didn’t lie to themselves, the pain of the reality would be unbearable. Why is it we would rather drink to the point of destruction than tell someone else how we really feel? What are we so scared of?”
What do you think is the most effective pace to read or listen to the book? Small parts like a chapter a day, read the whole book in a few days, or doesn’t matter?
When I read it, I couldn’t put it down because I really craved all of the information that she offers, but for some who are considering sobriety it may be overwhelming. In this case I recommend small parts.
Why would you recommend it?
It was one of the first books I read in sobriety so it’s very special to me. It answered a lot of the questions I had about why I drank, what alcoholism is, and the different ways it affected my life. It allowed me to educate myself on how I could get better after understanding what was happening to me.
Is there anything else you would like to add to your review?
Veronica not only offers pertinent information about why we drink, she talks about her own experience with addiction and she also has other people’s stories who have acknowledged their addiction and have found recovery.
Find “Why You Drink and How To Stop” at Amazon.com.
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Kelly’s work has been featured across the web on sites like the Huffington Post, Medium, Ravishly, Addiction.com, The Fix, SheKnows, Sober Nation, BuzzFeed, Elite Daily, Addiction Unscripted, and AfterParty Magazine
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Add to your reading list! Check out our other book reviews:
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