In her first book, Sarah Levy offers readers a candid account of her struggles with alcohol and her rocky path to sobriety. Drinking Games is a memoir-in-essays that peels back the layers of Levy's life--happy to all outward appearances--to reveal a much more difficult truth.
"I looked like I had it all together," Levy writes in the first pages of Drinking Games, "but my insides told a different story." Despite a successful job with a hot new start-up, a vast network of friends and an active social life, Levy was drowning inside--sometimes literally, consuming copious amounts of alcohol at any and every occasion, with sloppy blackouts her norm. Because she hadn't hit her definition of bottom--drinking on the job, losing her housing, driving while intoxicated--she convinced herself for years that her drinking wasn't really a problem. But, as she notes, "hitting bottom doesn't have to be catastrophic; it can simply mean that we are ready to stop digging." For Levy, this came after waking up next to a stranger, another blackout one-night stand. After years of trying to drink in moderation with no success, she found a support group and built up a new sober life, one day at a time. "The insanity of my drinking," she notes, "was my inability to accept that it wasn't serving me."
With raw honesty, Levy explores the years it took her to learn this truth for herself. She offers details about her partying lifestyle and her mindsets around drinking through her 20s. She recounts the ways she inched toward sobriety; tells of her last drink and her first recovery group meeting; and finally explores the ways that sobriety has given her a sense of freedom--and even joy--that felt impossible when she was drinking, but equally hard for her to imagine would be possible when sober. Ultimately, Levy's path to sobriety becomes a lens through which she reflects on drinking culture and what it means to be sober within that. She also explores the challenges so many people (and particularly so very many millennial women) face in entering adulthood. Her stories examine how people navigate grown-up friendships, the toxicity of social media, emotionally secure romantic relationships, unlearning toxic diet culture and disordered eating habits--to name just a few.
Drinking Games is hard to read at times, yet never judgmental; in her vulnerability and willingness to share the highs and lows of her relationship with alcohol, Levy invites readers to consider what might not be serving them in this moment--and what might be possible on the other side of whatever habit is holding them back from true freedom. --Kerry McHugh, freelance writer
Shelf Talker: A memoir-in-essays considers one woman's struggles with alcohol--and her rocky path to sobriety--to examine the challenges of adulthood.