A comprehensive, passionate, and helpful resource for those looking for an alternative to alcohol.
A self-help guide advocates overcoming alcohol addiction through mindfulness, inspired by cognitive behavioral therapy.
In this robust manual, Holmes, an online counselor and founder of the Addiction Help Agency, offers an easy and painless way to quit drinking alcohol permanently. The core of this process is a style of cognitive behavioral therapy with a focus on the incremental reduction of drinking and an increase in mindfulness—through meditation, self-assessment, and self-monitoring—to identify harmful patterns. To aid in this, the book provides numerous tools, from graphs and tables for recording habits to diagnostic tests like the Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test, the DSM-5, and others. The guide also discusses self-report surveys like the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale and the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale. Alongside readers in this undertaking is Moz, a high-functioning drinker and a stand-in for the author, who struggled with alcohol. Moz presents examples of the book’s process and how it succeeded for Holmes. Moz’s experiences also act as a gateway to the deeper research the manual supplies on subjects like the role alcohol plays in popular culture, its chemical composition, and its effects on sex and oft-encountered challenges like loneliness and midlife crises. The book promises “a radical alternative to the public perception…of drinking” as well as “a revolution in alcohol awareness.” In the latter case especially, the guide succeeds. The number of resources and the extensive, well-cited research may feel overwhelming, but the author’s presentation and simple breakdowns will answer most of the questions that patient readers have. The work’s use of Sherlock Holmes quotes throughout that treat alcohol addiction as a kind of mystery to be solved is clever, and the technique never distracts or overstays its welcome. The book is primarily a self-help resource, so those without at least some awareness of their problem or possible difficulty are likely not its audience. The text’s enthusiasm for its own methods can feel like a sales pitch at times but is nonetheless encouraging and infectious.
A comprehensive, passionate, and helpful resource for those looking for an alternative to alcohol.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73995-891-6
Page Count: 375
Publisher: Addiction Help Agency Ltd.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Clever and accessibly conversational, Manson reminds us to chill out, not sweat the small stuff, and keep hope for a better...
The popular blogger and author delivers an entertaining and thought-provoking third book about the importance of being hopeful in terrible times.
“We are a culture and a people in need of hope,” writes Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, 2016, etc.). With an appealing combination of gritty humor and straightforward prose, the author floats the idea of drawing strength and hope from a myriad of sources in order to tolerate the “incomprehensibility of your existence.” He broadens and illuminates his concepts through a series of hypothetical scenarios based in contemporary reality. At the dark heart of Manson’s guide is the “Uncomfortable Truth,” which reiterates our cosmic insignificance and the inevitability of death, whether we blindly ignore or blissfully embrace it. The author establishes this harsh sentiment early on, creating a firm foundation for examining the current crisis of hope, how we got here, and what it means on a larger scale. Manson’s referential text probes the heroism of Auschwitz infiltrator Witold Pilecki and the work of Isaac Newton, Nietzsche, Einstein, and Immanuel Kant, as the author explores the mechanics of how hope is created and maintained through self-control and community. Though Manson takes many serpentine intellectual detours, his dark-humored wit and blunt prose are both informative and engaging. He is at his most convincing in his discussions about the fallibility of religious beliefs, the modern world’s numerous shortcomings, deliberations over the “Feeling Brain” versus the “Thinking Brain,” and the importance of striking a happy medium between overindulging in and repressing emotions. Although we live in a “couch-potato-pundit era of tweetstorms and outrage porn,” writes Manson, hope springs eternal through the magic salves of self-awareness, rational thinking, and even pain, which is “at the heart of all emotion.”
Clever and accessibly conversational, Manson reminds us to chill out, not sweat the small stuff, and keep hope for a better world alive.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-288843-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The book would have benefited from a tighter structure, but it’s inspiring and relatable for readers with depression.
The creator and host of the titular podcast recounts his lifelong struggles with depression.
With the increasing success of his podcast, Moe, a longtime radio personality and author whose books include The Deleted E-Mails of Hillary Clinton: A Parody (2015), was encouraged to open up further about his own battles with depression and delve deeper into characteristics of the disease itself. Moe writes about how he has struggled with depression throughout his life, and he recounts similar experiences from the various people he has interviewed in the past, many of whom are high-profile entertainers and writers—e.g. Dick Cavett and Andy Richter, novelist John Green. The narrative unfolds in a fairly linear fashion, and the author relates his family’s long history with depression and substance abuse. His father was an alcoholic, and one of his brothers was a drug addict. Moe tracks how he came to recognize his own signs of depression while in middle school, as he experienced the travails of OCD and social anxiety. These early chapters alternate with brief thematic “According to THWoD” sections that expand on his experiences, providing relevant anecdotal stories from some of his podcast guests. In this early section of the book, the author sometimes rambles. Though his experiences as an adolescent are accessible, he provides too many long examples, overstating his message, and some of the humor feels forced. What may sound naturally breezy in his podcast interviews doesn’t always strike the same note on the written page. The narrative gains considerable momentum when Moe shifts into his adult years and the challenges of balancing family and career while also confronting the devastating loss of his brother from suicide. As he grieved, he writes, his depression caused him to experience “a salad of regret, anger, confusion, and horror.” Here, the author focuses more attention on the origins and evolution of his series, stories that prove compelling as well.
The book would have benefited from a tighter structure, but it’s inspiring and relatable for readers with depression.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-20928-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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