Not Drinking Tonight: A Guide to Creating a Sober Life You Love

Drinking is everywhere in our culture--whether it's wine-o-clock or impromptini, alcohol often is a fundamental part of socializing and destressing. And it can seem black or white: you drink or you don't. If you fall into the latter camp, people automatically assume one of a few things: you're pregnant, you're taking antibiotics, or you're in recovery. There's not a lot of grey area. But a lot of women aren't given the tools to really take a step back and assess their relationship to alcohol in a way that is informative and clear-eyed, rather than absolute. Not Drinking Tonight is a book that helps women explore their relationship with alcohol in a new way and create a sober life they love. Written in a judgement-free and relatable tone, this timely guide seamlessly blends research from evolutionary psychology with easy-to-digest clinical tools and practices to help women assess then heal their relationship with alcohol from the inside out.

The narrative threads are based on therapist Amanda White's three archetypal clients, following their journey in reevaluating their relationship with alcohol, understanding why they drink, and discovering how to stop. The women come from diverse backgrounds and range in the seriousness of their alcohol consumption, demonstrating a mild, moderate, and severe case of Alcohol Use Disorder. Each will come to a different conclusion about why they want to stop drinking by the end of the book, a framework that not only recalls Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, but also shares therapeutic tools and practices. Reflective questions help readers dig deeper into their personal experience and apply the concepts to their own lives. Where other sobriety or sober-curious books present various programs to stop drinking, Amanda's book first--and critically--addresses the root issues that cause us to reach for a drink, setting up the reader for long-term psychological healing and success.