When my life coach first called me a workaholic, I felt pride. I had always been someone who worked hard and had at least 20 balls in the air and got them all accomplished. Then she equated my workaholicness to being an alcoholic and I felt worse. And then she told me a I should read a book about getting sober and I felt even worse. So I read Quit Like A Woman: The Radical Choce to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol by Holly Whitaker, one of the two choices she gave me. And I have to say within the first few chapters I felt attacked.

The first half of the book Whitaker literally spells out why alchol is so bad for you in clinical terms. So deep that I felt bad when I ordered a beer at a recent Phillies game that I went to because I knew it would have such a horrible effect on my body. But when she started talking about all the ways that alchol was getting in the way of her life, that is when I started to see traces of myself. One quote says “I spent a year chasing down the question Why am I an alcoholic? before I started chasing down the questions that matter, like Why can’t I be with myself at all?“. That statement alone basically echoed all of the things that my life coach and I had talked about and why she suggested that I read the book. My need to work or at least do something that I could make into work was my addiction and I used it as a way to for me to hide from myself and the world around me.

I will admit that after the first half of the book Whitaker did lose me a bit since there were a lot of her examples that I couldn’t quite 100% get on board with, but as the book started to close; she started talking about all of the ways her life got better and how she started enjoying things more. One of the things that she mentions was enjoying the clouds where she was and that was something that I just did. I got on a plane for the first time in what feels like forever (thanks COVID) and for most of the trip I just read this book and looked out the window. I forgot how much I enjoyed traveling and being able to relax for the 50 mintue flight I was on and I was just able to watch the clouds. During take off I played with the timelapse camera and produced this

One of the other things that my coach asked me to do in this time was to just stop and let things be. I think that the video proved that I did. This book showed me how needing to be going all the time is hurting me and my relationships (while not as drastically as booze does, but it is still happening). So I am going to try to take some time now to try to “recover” from my workaholic state. It will be a long road but I have faith that I can get there.

I would give this book 3 stars.