Reviews for Whiskey's Children

The average rating for Whiskey's Children based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-03-02 00:00:00 Syvongsay Saokham This book is the gospel. I cannot recommend it enough to anyone who battles with alcoholism or who grew up in an alcoholic family. Reading this book has helped me immensely, I felt like the author was transcribing my own thoughts and fears. The power of this is in breaking through to the alcoholic's battered psyche that you are not alone, that you are not the only one fighting this daily war. "I hear about lives that have been so much worse than mine it embarrasses me. But there's a curious thing. The pain all seems the same. There doesn't seem to be any hierarchy. The pain is independent of events. That's what they mean by a spiritual sickness. Every time I recognize a meaning its like the easing of a cramp." (p.170) "The nasty truth is that when a practicing alcoholic creates a family he creates a support system for his alcoholism. His family's fear will make them minimize, cover for him, and cry by themselves. Because the fear of collapse is usually worse than the dull, day-to-day misery. This is pretty much the edge of hell. When you get near the end of the line you find out that every drink you took helped compress the fear as if it were a huge spring in your chest. When the alcohol stops working it lets the spring go and suddenly there's nothing in your life but sickness and time and the pain of the past." (p.204) "Coming back to life is no fun. It's hard and your nerves make a noise like a rusted-out engine trying to turn over. It's a job you have to do. Not because you are getting paid, not because you want to look good,, not because you'll get your wife back - not because you'll get anything back. Maybe you will and maybe you won't. You do it because there are others, and when you ask for help it's there. So that in at least one part of your life you're not a kid anymore, looking for answers with no one to ask. I've never had another drink, and in my life now I try to give some time to a proposition that I've come to believe covers all of human obligation - we need to pass on less pain than we receive. Knowing at the end of the story with the light fading, that none of it was for nothing and that through all the pain you managed, finally, to pass on less than you got. It's how the volume of human misery can decrease, and how sobriety works." (p.194-195)

Review # 2 was written on 2019-04-22 00:00:00 Donna Milcheck Dnf p. 118. It moved along at a decent enough pace, but I failed to stay engaged. I just stopped caring.