Amanda Eyre Ward - The Sober Lush: A Hedonists Guide to Living a Decadent, Adventurous, Soulful Life—Alcohol Free

THE SOBER LUSH

I wish Id had The Sober Lush when I quit drinking. I was so scared the exciting part of my life was over, but this guidebook to pleasure and beauty and play is a reminder of all that awaits us when we stop hiding with booze and reconnect with the worldand ourselves.

Sarah Hepola, author of Blackout

The difficult part of getting clean isnt that initial burst of rehab. Its the arduous process of carving out a sober identity. This book is a big-hearted, big-brained way to find that new life. Its a charming, humorous exploration of learning how to do right by ourselves.

Joshua Mohr, author of Sirens

I fell in love with Amanda Eyre Ward and Jardine Libaire from the first line of this fantastic book and finished it wanting them to be my new best friends. While The Sober Lush explores sobriety, it is ultimately a book about the beauty and delicacy of love, friendship, and family. In short, this book is for everyone who wants to find new ways to live, love, and become a lush at life.

Elizabeth L. Silver, author of The Execution of Noa P. Singleton and The Tincture of Time

This wonderful book had everything: incredible writing, laugh-out-loud moments, raw storytelling, honesty, friendship, humor, and sex. Read this book! I absolutely loved it. The Sober Lush truly shifts your mind-set about how incredible and fulfilling a sober life can be! The Sober Lush is a provoking read that left me wanting more.

Annie Grace

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Copyright 2020 Amanda Eyre Ward and Jardine Libaire

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A version of Room 302 appeared in Texas Monthly as Whats Going Down in Room 312 in February 2017.

A version of Climbing Rocks appeared in Self as Why a Little Risk Is Good for You in 2015.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Libaire, Jardine, author. | Ward, Amanda Eyre, 1972 author.

Title: The sober lush : a hedonists guide to living a decadent, adventurous, soulful lifealcohol free / Jardine Libaire and Amanda Eyre Ward.

Description: [New York] : TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, [2020]

Identifiers: LCCN 2020006475 (print) | LCCN 2020006476 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593084823 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593084830 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Temperance. | Drinking of alcoholic beveragesPsychological aspects. | Drinking of alcoholic beveragesHealth aspects.

Classification: LCC HV5060 .L483 2020 (print) | LCC HV5060 (ebook) | DDC 613.81dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020006475

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020006476

p. cm.

Neither the publisher nor the authors are engaged in rendering professional advice or services to the individual reader. The ideas, procedures, and suggestions contained in this book are not intended as a substitute for consulting with your physician. All matters regarding your health require medical supervision. Neither the authors nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising from any information or suggestion in this book.

The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

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Amanda would like to dedicate this book to the loved ones who inspired her path, Gary Davenport Brabander Ward, Larry and Barbara Meckel, Peter Westley, and to her partner in crime, Jardine.

Jardine dedicates this book to all the Ravens, who showed her how luscious life can be, and to her dear ally Amanda.

INTRODUCTION

We are writers. We fell in love with the elegant, gin-soaked stories of Raymond Carver, Jean Rhys, Patricia Highsmith, Dorothy Parker, and Ernest Hemingway. We were seduced by the druggy prose of Hunter S. Thompson, Helen Garner, and Paul Bowles. We wrote our own short stories with a glass of whiskey next to our notebooks, tapping lipstick-stained cigarettes into an ashtray stolen from a hotel we could not afford.

We dreamed of being novelists and listened to Johnny Thunders and Billie Holiday and Jimi Hendrix and stayed too late in bars that were open past closing time and we woke with a pounding in our heads and our hearts. We wanted to make something true and beautiful, wanted a surefire way to get to the other side of ordinary lifeto the creative side, the anarchistic side, the hedonistic side.

We hit a wall in this pursuit when drinking did not deliver us to that hallowed place of creating and dreaming and living big. Instead, it took us further away. We knew our lives needed to change, and so we searched for the answers in books. We found Pete Hamills A Drinking Life; Caroline Knapps Drinking, A Love Story; Sarah Hepolas Blackout; and Mary Karrs Lit. We devoured the stories of artists whod almost boozed themselves to death but then decided, instead, to live. These incredible books were the entry point into imagining something else, and their accounts of lost weekends, blacked-out days, and broken families helped us know it was time to stop. But we also wondered, Is this the end, or can it be a beginning?

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We were introduced to each other because we were both sober writers, and when we sat down to talk, we had many of the same questions. Both of us had given up drinking in our own ways, through our own processes, but now wondered how to thrive sober.

We talked for hours, meeting in Jardines garden or walking the trail around Austins Lady Bird Lake. Amanda cried while Jardines Chihuahua, Loverman, lay curled at her side, his eyes as beseeching as Amandas voice. We went to meetings; we went to lunch. We drank coffee and more coffee.

What happens when you decide to live soberfor a month or a lifetimebut still yearn for danger and chaos, still hope for a secret path to joy? How can you find the sort of raw and crazy connection that used to come in boozy, dive-bar confession sessions? Can you still be dirty and wild, can you take a super-blissed-out vacation, can you trip out on life, can you fall in love, holding a