For nearly three decades, stand-up comedian Amber Tozer (Cartoon Network's MAD, Adult Swim's Moral Orel) maintained a troubled relationship with alcohol, one that began innocently enough at seven, when an uncle proffered that first drink. Sober Stick Figure tells of Tozer's descent into alcoholism and her slow, painful journey to sobriety.
Tozer's fate seemed predetermined. She was descended from a long line of alcoholics and her parents were owners of the local watering hole. An overachiever athletically and academically, she indulged in recreational binge drinking to silence negative voices in her head. When she was 13, Jim Beam was "a voice I felt like I had been waiting for all my life," a seductive drug she would crave like crack cocaine during school holidays, despite her baby sister's close brush with death at the hands of a drunk driver. In her 20s, alcohol became a self-medicating salve in times of social and emotional distress. A move to New York City after college brought easy access to bars, alcohol as barter for an aspiring stand-up comedian. "Partying in a big city and experimenting with new jobs and challenges and being overexposed to everything" fueled her mounting self-destructiveness, until she finally hit rock bottom at the height of professional success in Los Angeles.
Tozer writes with unguarded honesty about addiction and what it means to be an alcoholic. The moments of hilarity are rare, such as Tozer's obsession with self-help guru Tony Robbins, yet for all the pain and self-destruction Tozer has endured, Sober Stick Figure ends on a promising, if tentative, silver lining that the best is yet to come. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant