Drunk Mom: A Memoir

By Jowita Bydlowska

Three years after giving up drink, Jowita Bydlowska found herself throwing back a glass of champagne like it was ginger ale. "It's a special occasion," she said to her boyfriend. And indeed it was. It was a party celebrating the birth of their first child. It also marked Jowita's immediate, full-blown return to alcoholism and all that entails for a new mother who is at first determined to keep her problem a secret. 

Her trips to liquor stores are in-and-out missions. Perhaps she's being paranoid, but she thinks people tend to notice the stroller. Walking home, she stays behind buildings, in alleyways, taking discreet sips from a bottle she's stored in the diaper bag. She know she's become a villain: a mother who drinks; a mother who endangers her child. She drinks to forget this. And then the trouble really starts.

Jowita Bydlowska's memoir of her relapse into addiction is an extraordinary achievement. The writing is raw and immediate. It places you in the moment--saddened, appalled, nerve-wracked, but never able to look away or stop turning the pages. With brutal honesty, Bydlowska takes us through the binges and blackouts, the self-deception and less successful attempts to deceive others, the humiliations and extraordinary risk-taking. She shines a light on the endless hunger of wanting just one more drink, and one more again, while dealing with motherhood, anxiety, depression--and rehab.

Her struggle to regain her sobriety is recorded in the same unsentimental, unsparing, sometimes grimly comic way. But the happy outcome is evidenced by the existence of this brilliant book: she has lived to tell the tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9780385677813

Reviews for Drunk Mom

[bookishjojo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

i stayed up way, way too late last night because i couldn't stop reading this book. it's a tough read at times - which, given the title one must expect, really. but the thing bydlowska does amazingly well is convey the mindset of an addicted/alcoholic person: the frantic, the chaotic, the scheming, the blacked-out, the re-framing. the behaviours she uses in planning to buy her alcohol, drinking her booze, dealing with the empty bottles, lying to her boyfriend, endangering her baby's life - being aware of this, guilty over it yet unable to do differently...well, it's amazing. it's a warty story and while moments are sensational - the opening scene has her finding a baggie of coke in a washroom stall at the ROM (in toronto), which she then proceeds to snort - i never felt like bydlowska was purposefully trying to make anything out to be worse or bigger than it was. her alcoholism was (is) ugly. people around her suffered. this book doesn't ask you to like her or feel empathy for her (though i did. feel empathy, that is.) i think the point of this book is to open the minds of those who don't have addictions/addictive personalities. fwiw, bydlowska is the partner of globe and mail columnist russell smith.

[tim.roberson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As a recovering alcoholic myself, this was a vivid reminder of drunken nights I don’t recall and all the associated pain and self loathing that came with it. I thank the author for her courage in putting her story front and center and honest. Highly recommended, particularly those who know the struggle.

[froxgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Every word is drawn from pain. I think this is probably the best book by an alcoholic I've ever read, up to and including "Drinking: A Love Story" by the late genius Caroline Knapp. Because this one has a baby at the heart of it. Or, more accurately, this one has a mom who pumps breast milk, gets shitfaced, and then waits a period of time before nursing again, to make sure the vodka leaves her system. R-I-I-G-H-T. Instead of emphasizing what brought her to her successful abstinence and then unsuccessful relapse, Jowita explains her drinking strategies (mental maps of liquor stores, etc) and her self loathing in depth, and I mean deep depths.But - and this is a truth I have never heard told before - she claims that in order to be sober, the alcoholic must yearn for sobriety as strongly as he/she yearned for alcohol. To replace one irrational desire for another; one harmful for one good. This seems so simple but it came as a revelation to me. And so a blazingly distressing read is redeemed.

[latorreliliana · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Title says it all. Very revealing raw account of a year of alcoholism as mother struggles to look after new baby.