Books are turning us off booze (Picture: Shutterstock/Getty)
Four months ago I stopped drinking, and the process of changing my relationship with alcohol is full of new discoveries.
From trying out booze-free tipples, to engaging with sober communities, I’m learning new things about myself every day – it turns out that I’m not a terrible sleeper after all, alcohol was just good at keeping me up all night.
Another recent discovery I’ve made? Quit lit: the name given to the genre of books which make us examine how and why we drink booze.
These books can be how-to manuals or memoirs, sobriety toolkits or scientific deep dives into the impact of alcohol on our bodies. Some fiction can even be classed as quit lit, if it covers relevant themes and experiences.
I first came across the term in a WhatsApp group I belong to, run by Sober Girl Society – a community for sober and sober curious women. Someone had asked for recommendations for books that had helped them on their journeys, and the titles, and enthusiasm for them, kept on pinging through.
The hashtag #quitlit has over 869K views on TikTok – no surprise, with Gen Z paving the way for teetotal lifestyles. According to the most recent figures from Drinkaware, 26% of 16 to 24 year olds classify themselves as ‘non-drinkers’. But sober curiosity is increasingly going mainstream, with hundreds of thousands in the UK participating in ‘no-drink’ initiatives like Dry January.
Anna stopped drinking five years ago (Picture: Sam Grady)
Ask anyone who’s used quit lit on their personal journey and they’ll talk about a sense of kinship. Seeing their experiences reflected on the page; feeling like they don’t have to go it alone.
Anna Sudbury, 43, is one such tee-totaler, who stopped drinking five years ago. She explains: ‘When I first quit, I wanted emotional support, stories of others and the sense of sisterhood.’
She turned to Catherine Gray’s The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober. ‘I liked that it was written by someone with a life like mine – busy, fun and social. The book focuses on the benefits of sobriety and what can come into your life when you let the alcohol out.’
The impact of the book has been transformative for Anna’s career, as well as her sobriety: based in Whitstable, she is now a sober coach helping others stop drinking.
For Maria Godfrey, 34, a film and TV production manager, it was the non-nonsense science based book, Alcohol Explained, by William Porter, that really resonated.
Maria, from Twickenham, who stopped drinking after being diagnosed with an extremely painful degenerative disc disease, listened to the audiobook ‘over and over’. She says: ‘I found it so helpful because it talks about things in a very science-based, this-is-what-it’s-doing-to-your-body type way.’
Maria’s top pick is Alcohol Explained, by William Porter (Picture: Supplied)
So, if your current ‘quit lit’ choice doesn’t gel, there are plenty of titles to try which might work better for where you are in your journey. Allen Carr’s books Control Alcohol and Stop Drinking Now are popular choices for those in the early stages of sobriety, especially since readers are advised not to attempt to cut down or quit until they’ve finished reading the book.
Others turn to quit lit for a much needed sense of community and companionship. Drinking alcohol is such a norm in our society that it’s not uncommon for those looking to stop to feel isolated.
That’s what 38-year-old Londoner, Alex Jones, discovered when she stopped drinking four years ago after a series of particularly bad hangovers. She was recommended a couple of quit lit books in the early months of sobriety: Gray’s The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober and Annie Grace’s This Naked Mind. She discovered both were packed with ‘lightbulb moments’ – like how Gray discusses the glamourisation of drinking in film and TV (and notes how many of those actors portraying the roles hardly drink in real life).
‘As someone who had found herself on more than one occasion pausing the TV to run out and buy wine after seeing Olivia Pope savouring a glass of red on Scandal, that really made me stop and think,’ Alex says.
Alex said the books were filled with ‘lightbulb moments’ (Picture: Supplied)
Ditto with This Naked Mind: ‘I remember the section on why most people don’t really “just drink for the taste” being especially eye-opening for me.’
For 33-year-old Merryn Bishop, while she has her own quit lit reccomendations (she credits Holly Whitaker’s Quit Like a Woman as being the book that ‘changed everything’ for her) she adds that, if you’re starting to question your relationship to alcohol, a general self-help book, like Self Compassion by Kristin Neff, might be just as useful.
She says: ‘In a way, you’re better off at the beginning going for the books that aren’t specifically about alcohol, but about loving yourself, being kinder to yourself. Quitting drinking is really hard to do if you’re not being kind to yourself.’
Currently on her longest stretch of not drinking, Merryn is finding that reading more widely about mental health and understanding how that’s linked to alcohol consumption, can help you understand the reasons why you reach for that glass of wine.
Merryn reccomends learning about mental health (Picture: Supplied)
‘Ultimately, I don’t think the books are fixing you… if you’re not ready to fix yourself, then the books are only going to help you for a little bit,’ she says.
Quit lit is by no means immune to criticism, whether people feel certain books romanticise relationships with alcohol, or conflate actual science with pseudoscience. Some critics are uncomfortable with how bestselling quit lit authors like Whitaker and Grace are now associated with paid-for platforms which not only help people quit drinking but offer sober coaching certifications, too (a potentially murky, tricky-to-regulate field in the US).
There’s another thing: a majority of the stories you’ll find in bookstores are predominantly written from a white, female (or male), middle class lens. There is a whole spectrum of individual experiences relating to a person’s skin colour, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds still missing from the genre.
Back in 2008, Laura Cathcart Robbins, the California-based host of podcast The Only One in the Room and author of Stash: My Life in Hiding, went looking for quit lit books that reflected her experiences as an American Black woman addicted to prescription drugs – and found nothing on the shelves.
‘The only reason I know how to do anything is by reading other people’s books about it,’ Laura says. ‘I went to bookstores and looked for books written by people who looked like me: black women, brown women, or women of colour who were going through something similar to what I was going through. There were none.’
Twelve years later, after Laura wrote Stash – from the vantage point where race, privilege and addiction intersect – she was shocked that there were still no titles written by women or people of colour in the ‘quit lit’ genre. Laura’s memoir tells the story of how she hid her drug and alcohol addiction behind a high-profile veneer as a Hollywood wife and mother – at the height of her addiction, she was president of the Parents’ Association at her children’s’ school.
Laura struggled to find representative Quit Lit (Picture: Cooper Urlich)
Laura still believes you can find yourself in quit lit – you just need to look for the similarities on the page. ‘Each one was a jewel that I found. She has kids. She’s divorced. Put it all together and I had an experience I could rely on, minus the person of colour element.’
In fact, one of the books that helped shape Laura’s sobriety journey is Dry by Augusten Burroughs who is a white, gay man. She found the memoir so inspiring that she took herself on a tour of the 12-step meetings in NYC that he’d written about.
More: Trending
For Laura, the most powerful element of quit lit is seeing the candour and courage of others.
‘I won’t speak for everybody, but when I put myself into recovery, there was this overwhelming feeling that I would never be able to redeem myself. To see how others had been in the same position and had redeemed themselves – and were brave enough to write about it – was incredibly inspiring to me.
‘Honestly, that’s one of the main reasons I wrote Stash. Addiction is marginalising enough, so you don’t need another thing on top of that to feel marginalised about.’
TikTok’s Quit Lit recommendations
The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, by Catherine Gray
Catherine Gray has been sober since 2013, after realising her daily wine habit was affecting her career, relationships and wellbeing. Part memoir, part deep dive, the book has become a best seller, resonating with those looking to reexamine their relationship with alcohol.
Stash: My Life In Hiding, by Laura Cathcart Robbins
Laura wrote her memoir after being unable to find a book that reflected her experiences as an American Black woman. Married to a film exec and living in Hollywood, her life seemed perfect – but she was hiding an addiction to pills, and scheduling withdrawals between after school clubs and PTA meetings.
Quit Like A Woman, by Holly Whitaker
Name checked in And Just Like That, as the book that helped Miranda Hobbes go sober, Holly’s book has become an international bestseller.
This memoir looks at how we see alcohol and recovery from addiction through a patriarchal lense: she realised that alcohol is not only targeted at women differently, but the systems to help people quit, are also ‘archaic, patriarchal and ineffective for the unique needs of women.’
The Easy Way to Control Alcohol, by Allen Car
A good recommendation for those starting their sober curious journey, Allen Carr is seen as one of the pioneers of addiction therapy.
This book offers a step by step methodology to help you ‘escape from the alcohol trap’. It’s said to be easy to follow and requires minimal will power.
Do you have a story to share?
Get in touch by emailing [email protected].
MORE : Like Matthew Perry, we’ve also experienced addiction — here’s what he’d want you to know
MORE : Sober dating has helped me realise these red flags before it’s too late
‘It changed everything for me.’