Drunk-ish: Loving and Leaving Alcohol

A mother drags herself kicking and screaming into sobriety in this raucous memoir from humorist Wilder-Taylor (Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay). Recapping her fraught relationships with booze and other addictive substances, from the candy she binged and purged as a teenager to the Xanax she scarfed to subdue postpartum anxiety, Wilder-Taylor writes that her reasons for drinking were manifold: to get over shyness, to soothe her stage fright before stand-up gigs, because drinking a little felt good enough to drink a lot. Waking up hungover one morning after driving home drunk from a friend’s house with her toddlers in tow, she decided to quit alcohol and join Alcoholics Anonymous, which felt like “the world’s dullest book club, because instead of reading the latest Oprah Winfrey discovery, the only book up for discussion was a boring one about people in the 1930s who couldn’t quit drinking.” Wilder-Taylor paints a vivid, self-skewering portrait of alcoholic delusion and dysfunction, from dubious rationalizations (“All of those studies say red wine has antioxidants in it that prevent heart disease. I mean, are you trying to have a heart attack?”) to mortifying physical indignities (an explosive bout of drunk vomiting is described as “a July Fourth fireworks finale”). The results are funny, neurotic, and woozily uplifting. (Jan.)