Smith - Girl walks out of a bar: a memoir

Advance Praise for Girl Walks out of a Bar

Lisa Smith gives us a darkly comic, honest, and completely relatable inside look at high-functioning addiction in the world of corporate lawa sort of Sex and the Psych Ward. Its inspiring, informative, and impossible to put down.

Jennifer Belle, best-selling author of High Maintenance and The Seven Year Bitch

Whether shes telling the town car driver to turn around so she can ditch showing up for her nieces birth and meet her coke dealer, or staging her own semi-intervention, Smith takes us into the mind of someone whos completely in control while being radically out of control. This girl may have walked out of a bar, but shes walked into one of the best addiction memoirs Ive ever read.

Anna David,New York Times best-selling author of Party Girl, Bought, and editor of True Tales of Lust and Love

Raw, naked and unflinching, Girl Walks out of a Bar catapults the reader into the sordid, desperate reality of high-functioning addiction: the booze, the coke, the lies; the denial, the depression, the blackouts. All are on full display as New York lawyer Lisa Smith loses herself in a deep and all-too-human descent into perpetual numbing. A chilling, cautionary tale.

Ann Dowsett Johnston, Author of Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol

Smith openly shares the lies, secrecy, depression, and isolation that define a life only made livable by alcohol. Her raw depiction unveils the pressures of her job (20 percent of lawyers have substance abuse problems, she reports) as well as the personal costs of addiction, including divorce, ill health, and self-loathing. Readers will root for this extraordinary woman as she travels the path to recovery, healing, and triumph over addiction; her riveting story will inspire both those who have been there and those who have not.

Publishers Weekly April 4, 2016

Copyright 2016 by Lisa F. Smith

All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

This edition published by SelectBooks, Inc.

For information address SelectBooks, Inc., New York, New York.

First Edition

ISBN 978-1-59079-312-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Smith, Lisa F. (Lawyer), author.

Title: Girl walks out of a bar: a memoir / by Lisa Smith.

Description: First edition. | New York: SelectBooks, Inc., [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015032852

Subjects: LCSH: Smith, Lisa F. (Lawyer)--Health. | Substance abuse--Patients--United States--Biography. | Recovering addicts--United States--Biography. | Recovering alcoholics--United States--Biography.

Classification: LCC RC564 .S5665 2016 | DDC 362.29092--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015032852

Book design by Janice Benight

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For CDF, HS, and RLP

Table of Contents

Contents

T his book is the true story of events to the best of my recollection. Memory isnt perfect, of course, and memory under the influence is worse. I have recreated conversations as accurately as I recall them, and many of the key people included in the story have reviewed the manuscript for accuracy. To protect individuals privacy, some names, places, and identifying characteristics have been changed.

I am grateful to so many people for making this book possible. First, thank you to Jennifer Belle, the leader of the writers workshop that has been the highlight of my week for years, for all of your wisdom, encouragement, and editing. Donna Brodie, Rob Wolf, Nicola Harrison, Barbara Miller, Mike Pyrich, Mario Gabriele, and Aaron Zimmerman, thank you for the insightful feedback, advice, ridiculous laughter, and friendship.

Thanks to my agent and friend, Katharine Sands, for her invaluable guidance. Thank you to my publisher, SelectBooks, especially Kenzi Sugihara, Nancy Sugihara, and Kenichi Sugihara. Thanks also to Jodi Fodor, who has special magic with words and everything else. Sarah Saffian, thank you for your editing and inspiration. Thank you also to Steve Eisner and everyone at When Words Count Retreat.

Its true when I say that I wouldnt be here without my incredible family and friends. Mom, Lou, Andrea, Caroline, and Ben, thank you for all of the love and cheerleading. Dad would have loved this. Thank you to my special cousin-readers, Gail Kaplan, Robert Nussbaum, and the Roethel girls. Gwen Erkonen, thank you for deciding we should try the weekend workshop in Iowa. Kellie Butler, thanks for listening to us ramble about writing.

To my friends who appear in the book and those who dont, I am so grateful to call you my people and love you with all my heart. In the interest of preserving anonymity I wont name names.

And to my husband Craig, thank you for telling me early on that Id be a cheap date, and then supporting my efforts to write down the reasons why. I wake up every morning wondering how I got so lucky.

Shit. It was 7:00 Monday morning and I needed wine. In two hours Id have to be at work, which meant that I was going to have to steady my shaking hands. I inched out of bed and walked naked toward the kitchen. After just a few steps, my stomach lurched with the undeniable rumble of rising vomit, and I dashed to the bathroom with my hand pressed against my mouth. I vomited violently and then sprawled out across the cold tile floor and lay there like a deer that had just been hit by a car. After a few minutes I began to lift my head upright, slowly, gradually, as if sneaking up on something. When I had finally reached eye level with the toilet, I saw blood in the bowl.

Finally steady enough, I went to the kitchen and filled a dirty glass with wine from an open bottle. Looking down the long counter at the spoon rest Id bought in Italy, my fancy tea kettle, and the slotted spoons in a ceramic pitcher, I could almost convince myself that a normal person lived here, maybe even the successful, thirty-eight-year-old lawyer people saw when they looked at me. But for that perspective Id have to hold my hands up like a photographer framing a shot so I could crop out all the empty wine bottles, the dirty glasses, and the overflowing ashtrays.

My immaculate coffeemaker looked at me in judgment. This would be just another day that I ignored it in favor of the wine bottle. It was a good time for a cigarette.

Still naked, I shuffled to the living room and on hands and knees slapped around under the couch looking for my lighter. All I came up with was a handful of dust and seventeen cents. But there were always matches to be found somewhere in my dark den. I reached into a hand-painted box that sat on my end table and found a plain, white matchbook amid the rolling papers, razor blades, and rolled up dollar bills. I flopped down on the couch and lit a Marlboro Light.