DRINKING GAMES

A debut memoir about the author’s struggles with alcohol and journey toward sobriety.

When Levy was a junior in high school, she attended a party where a boy she had a crush on nonchalantly asked her, in front of a large group of her classmates, for oral sex. Devastated by the humiliation, she drank heavily and, for the first time in her life, blacked out. Although this pattern of excessive drinking continued throughout her 20s and resulted in the dissolution of her relationship with her best friend, Chloe—whose “uncle had run a major campaign for president of the United States” and whose “father was a high-powered diplomat in Europe”—mostly, Levy was able to maintain a functional, successful life, scaling the corporate ladder. After “a year sober” and having “just exited another startup with a work hard, play hard culture,” she earned the position of vice president of marketing at a “New York wellness brand,” and she lived in a series of nice neighborhoods like Gramercy and the Upper East Side. However, the author’s achievements masked her addiction, which continued to plague her. “I realized it didn’t matter if my drinking problem qualified as ‘real.’ I needed to stop, and it was clear, through years of trial and error, that I couldn’t do it myself,” she writes. “So, I did what once seemed impossible: I walked into a twelve-step recovery meeting.” At its best, the text reads like an intimate conversation between friends; the sections about Levy’s mother's struggle with breast cancer are particularly poignant. Too often, however, the author gives an overview of a thought process rather than actual information about her experience. For example, although she references an eating disorder, she doesn’t effectively show readers her struggle with food. By no means does Levy owe readers specific information about traumatic experiences or life patterns, but her emphasis on telling rather than showing feels misaligned with the vulnerability that she claims underpins the narrative.

An earnest examination of alcohol and sobriety that could have gone deeper.