This book would have been impossible without my sobriety, and my sobriety would be impossible without sober sisters who showed me that it was possible to live without drinking, especially Dallana. Thanks for helping me stay on the beam.
Author’s Note
This book is a memoir, consisting of my recollections of my own experiences. While writing this book, I had frequent conversations with close friends and family members about how they remembered the events I describe, and I relied on my own contemporaneous journals, emails, and letters to bolster my memories. Much of the verbal dialogue has been recreated from memory, often with the help of these additional resources.
I obtained my treatment files from the Residence XII (inpatient) and Lakeside-Milam (inpatient and outpatient) treatment centers as part of my research. I also relied on files from Fairfax Behavioral Health that I obtained upon my discharges from that facility as well as workbooks and materials I received during my stays in treatment and detox.
The names of some people in this book have been changed, and a few identifying details have been obscured.
About the Author
Erica C. Barnett is an award-winning political reporter. She started her career at the Texas Observer, the venerable progressive magazine cofounded by Molly Ivins, and went on to work as a reporter and news editor for the Austin Chronicle, Seattle Weekly, and The Stranger. She now covers addiction, housing, poverty, and drug policy at her blog, The C Is for Crank. She has written for a variety of local and national publications, including The Huffington Post, Seattle Magazine, and Grist.
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* Dieting is another risk factor, one researcher seems strangely keen to emphasize. The CASA study, which is not prone to flights of typographic fancy, italicizes this factoid for emphasis: “Although alcohol is high in calories and contributes to weight gain, only half (56 percent) of the girls surveyed were aware of this; 5.7 percent thought that drinking alcohol helps one lose weight.” This tendency to marvel that girls who want to lose weight don’t realize alcohol will make them fat—which is by no means confined to the CASA study—made me suspect that researchers don’t condemn dieting among young girls quite as much as they should.
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