Rating: 
Summary: Even a nondrinker can benefit from this book...
Review: I grew up in an alcoholic home, my first husband came from a home flowing with vodka, my second husband is a recovering alcoholic...I wish I had had this book available or something like it many many years ago. Would it have changed some of my own decisions...maybe, maybe not. I learned so much from this book. Insight of the drinker and insight of the nondrinker and realizing why it is said in Alanon that we are just as sick or sicker. Why some of us don't pick up the bottle when it is all around us may be a mystery...for me it was fear of losing control. I learned in this book that I still stunted my own growth in other ways as I too had an eating problem, I too didn't know how to deal with emotions. Caroline writes, "Anxiety looms and you think: This is why I drank. Sadness and shame wash up. This is why I drank. Feelings of rage surface. This is why I drank. The drink may have become the main obstacle between you and any hope of change, but a hundred other obstacles lie behind it and most of those have to do with emotions, the very beasts you never learned to contend with in any other way." Drinking stops our growth mentally. Any addiction that is so consuming, stops our mental growth.Also, Caroline talks about the difference of being in a relationship sober. "I'm still not used to being with someone so accepting and nonjudgmental, and I sometimes find myself feeling lost without the chaos and drama of a more volatile relationship." This really hit home as we often sabotage a good relationship without being aware of it because we are far more use to chaos. One does not have to be a drinker to do the very same thing. Anyone and everyone can benefit from reading this book. I'm sure that there are not many people out there who are not in some way involved with alcohol whether actively or through a loved one or friend. I was sad to to find out that Caroline passed away this June from cancer. Fortunately, she took the time to share her life with us in this most intimate way to hopefully help a lot of people, both those drinking and those involved with the drinkers.
Rating:
Summary: Simply Amazing
Review: I stumbled upon this book at a used book store in the area. I had wanted to read a book written by an alcoholic in an effort to understand the disease better and a close friend who is in his first stages of alcoholism. Caroline's words were very powerful. She has a great flair for writing and the book leaves you breathless, just wanting to know what happened in the following years of her life. This book helped me understand what my friend is going through, has taught me to be more sympathetic to people with this disease, and has made me thankful that I have no major addictions. I highly recommend this book to anyone that has been touched by alcoholism. It's a great read.
Rating: 
Summary: Shared Experience
Review: This is an amazing book and painfully accurate. I should know because I can see myself on these pages. The book also gives me hope, which I believe was Ms. Knapp's point in writing it. AA is an organziation based in fellowship, while maintaining anonymity
is one of its guiding priciples, so is sharing life stories of expereince, strength and hope. Ms. Knapp betrayed no one's confidences in this book. I only wish that I had the opportunity to thank her for her courage and insight in writing such an honest memoir.
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Summary: My review
Review: I don't and never have had an alcohol problem. I came to reading this book through my local library. I have had family members who had and some still have an alcohol problem. I found the book easy to read and down to earth. Once I started this book, I couldn't put it down. However, it now gives me an insight to inside an alcoholic's head - how they think, how they blame everything and everyone else around them instead of the drink and how they dismiss help so many times before getting help. At least the author of this book DID EVENTUALLY get help. I think that takes the most amount of courage. To admit you need help and to face up with the fact of being an alcoholic. If you have an alcohol problem, or know anybody who does, I recommend this book to you.
Rating: 
Summary: There are TWO As in AA . . .
Review: . . . unfortunately the author apparently only learned the first one. Sure, she's an "A"lcoholic, but AA really works because of the second "A." It's an "A"nonymous program that has a public relations policy that is based on attraction rather than promotion; one that places principles before personalities. It also requires personal anonymity "at the level of press, radio, and films." If she's supposed to be so smart, why didn't Caroline K understand the Traditions of AA?
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Summary: In Memory of Carolyn Knapp
Review: I was told by my mother earlier this week that Carolyn Knapp, author of 'Drinking: A Love Story", had died of cancer at age 42. I immedietly broke down a cried- which is hard for me to do. But Ms Knapp's autobiographical book about alcoholism was so important to me, my family and my therapist, in understanding and recognizing the thinking/feelings in a functional alcoholic. I had always wanted to read more from her, but don't see that she published another book....and, of course, I always had wanted the opportunity of either meeting her at a book signing, or writing to her, to thank her for her honesty and insight into this problem.....now it is to late to say this to her directly, and I grieve...but I also celebrate the life she had, and her courage and strength in overcoming this most maddening of problems. To anyone interested in a true and thoughtful book on functional alcoholics (of which there are many of us), or to anyone who is in a close relationship with such a person, this is THE book to read.
Rating:
Summary: a true lifesaver
Review: I just read that Ms. Knapp died of lung cancer and I'm in shock. Drinking: A Love Story changed my life for the better once I had made the decision to stop drinking and I picked up her book for some help and guidance. I've since shared it with every alcoholic I know. I'm extremely saddened that Ms. Knapp enjoyed only a few years of sobriety, and even more so at the thought of how short her life was. I found this book brilliant and personally fulfilling. I wish for half her talent.
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Summary: I was 12-stepped by this book
Review: I was browsing in a bookstore waiting for my comet photos to be developed when I saw this book on the "New" shelf. I started reading, and then put it back when it was time to pick up my pictures. But I couldn't stop thinking about this book, so I went back and bought it. I read it at the kitchen table while drinking a glass of wine. Alarm bells kept clanging and clanging. When I got halfway through, I realized I was just like her--a highly educated writer with a drinking problem. She has a great line in there--that sometimes insight is just a reversal of cause and effect. I don't drink because I have all these problems, I have all these problems because I drink! With horror and tears, I called a friend I knew in AA who brought me to a meeting. I've been clean and sober now for 5 years. I read in the NY Times today that Carolyn Knapp died yesterday from lung cancer at only 42 years of age. That makes me very sad. I feel very grateful to her and her wonderful book. It changed my life.
Rating: 
Summary: Drinking: an ungrateful story
Review: Like many other reviewers, I was irritated by the repetition of the first 2/3 of the book, her unwillingness to really get at anything--the book is a skate around the real issues of familial problems, an eating disorder, relationship woes, etc. But what really came clear in the final 1/3 was the utter ignorance of the author. Knapp describes drinking at the Ritz, attending parties filled with writers and editors, her Ivy League education, summers on Cape Cod with no regard to the fact that alcohol can destroy lives--unemployment, ruined families, death, etc.--and she emerged (from what I can see) unscathed. She always had money to buy, not merely her favorite beverages, but whatever clothes she'd been instructed to wear, an apartment conveniently located next to Julian. Her family continued to support her, and Michael (apparently) remains with her even now. I saw no moment of Knapp acknowledging her luck--how lucky she is to be alive, healthy, and surrounded by those who care for her. She ostensibly remains the same spoiled flake she always was, but now without her excuse of alcohol.
Rating:
Summary: The most insightful book about addiction I've ever read
Review: Knapp if a gifted stylist in the evocatively brittle vein of Marguerite Duras (good) or Kathryn Harrison (not so good). But what makes this book so compelling is her deep insight into the nature of her alcoholism and, by extension, addiction in general. Thus, the deeply screwed-up life detailed in these pages becomes much more than a sideshow attraction - i.e. Elizabeth Wurtzel's supremely tawdry "More, Now, Again". It becomes a valuable object lesson in the traps we set for ourselves. This is wisdom that anyone, addict or not, can benefit from.
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