SLIPPERY STEPS

A veteran music journalist chronicles his descent into and rise out of alcohol dependency.

While McLeese, a longtime writer and editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, Austin American-Statesman, and No Depression, climbed the media ranks as a music writer, alcohol began playing a more significant role in his life. He opens with an episode in which his wife, Maria, called 911 after discovering the author passed out drunk on the front lawn during a rainstorm. “I had been drinking for decades, nightly, and, yes, progressively more and more.” Eventually, his “self-medicating coping mechanism” severely damaged his family life and eroded a career he’d been building for decades. McLeese writes insightfully about how binge-drinking “became a way to recapture the impetuosity of lost youth” and probes his family history, showing how his parents’ dual alcoholism influenced his own propensity for addiction. Because he lacked the resolve to quit, the falls and the blackouts became commonplace. However, once he fully realized that he needed to stop or the strongholds in his life—especially his marriage and his relationships with his children—would continue to crumble, McLeese embarked on the true road to sobriety with earnest intentions. While his initial introductory experiences with the Alcoholics Anonymous fellowship are laced with wry humor, it’s clear that the author remained unconvinced that cessation was truly necessary and instead simply vowed to “play along” with the step program. “Did I want to be sober?” he repeatedly asked himself, “I wasn’t sure.” Even the beginning stages of sobriety proved to be a great challenge. Without alcohol, the fun of vacation evaporated, as did the enjoyment of daily life in general. McLeese is forthright and candid throughout, even when his honesty paints him as a functioning alcoholic deluded by fierce denial and false promises. The author’s eventual epiphany and road to sobriety continue, as evidenced by the inclusion of a closing “Step” education, which sober readers will recognize and appreciate.

A raw, painfully honest memoir rendered in assured prose.