“Ask a Former Drunk” is a five-part advice series running on Tuesdays. Read the last installment here.

“Ask a Former Drunk” is a five-part advice series running on Tuesdays. Read last week’s installment here.

“Ask a Former Drunk” is a five-part advice series running on Tuesdays. Read last week’s installment here.

Last year, I wrote a memoir about my long, tortured love affair with alcohol and my decision to quit at 35. The book was called Blackout. Since then, I’ve received mountains of correspondence from people who have their own complicated issues with alcohol, and each Tuesday, for the next four weeks, I’ll be answering…

Much is made of the therapeutically self-limiting idea that society is colluding to make young women vulnerable; not enough is made of the odds that a girl will respond to bullshit by coming up tough. Female grit is believed to be rare and loud and somewhat mythological when it’s just as often the opposite, and the…