When Holly found an alternate way out of her own addiction, she felt a calling to create a sober community with resources for anyone questioning their relationship with drinking, so that they might find their way as well. Fueled by her own emerging feminism, she also realized that the predominant systems of recovery are archaic, patriarchal, and ineffective for the unique needs of women and other historically oppressed people-who don’t need to lose their egos and surrender to a male concept of God, as the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous state, but who need to cultivate a deeper understanding of their own identities and take control of their lives. What’s more, she could not ignore the ways that alcohol companies were targeting women, just as the tobacco industry had successfully done generations before. As a society, we are obsessed with health and wellness, yet we uphold alcohol as some kind of magic elixir, though it is anything but.When Holly Whitaker decided to seek help after one too many benders, she embarked on a journey that led not only to her own sobriety, but revealed the insidious role alcohol plays in our society and in the lives of women in particular. It is a qualifier for belonging and if you don’t imbibe, you are considered an anomaly. Yet no one ever questions alcohol’s ubiquity-in fact, the only thing ever questioned is why someone doesn’t drink. We drink at baby showers and work events, brunch and book club, graduations and funerals. Either way, it will save your life.”-Melissa Hartwig Urban, Whole30 co-founder and CEOWe live in a world obsessed with drinking.
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