637: Holly Whitaker: Overcoming Addiction, Embracing Freedom

I read Holly's book because I see us as a society and individuals addicted to what pollution brings. What can we learn from someone who overcame a different addiction?

Holly's book is the opposite of a downer. It's spirited, researched, personal, and engaging. She reveals with infectious anger how society profited at wrecking her life, telling her poison was normal and good. Most of all, she shares how before stopping her addiction she thought sobriety looked impossible to achieve and boring if she did, but after sobriety, she loved life beyond what she could have imagined and beyond what an addiction-based society conditioned her to expect.

We live in a society built on addiction. We created it. Almost every sentence in her book applies directly to our addictions to what pollution brings: flying, social media, fashion, and so on, all lowering our quality of life, controlling us, hiding from us reality and how joyful life can be.

In our conversation we talk about the forces around us hell-bent on addicting us, creating craving and emotion to lock us in and keep us coming back. She agrees on how her experience applies to pollution.

• Holly's home page
• Her New York Times bestseller: Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol

From Holly's page, how to follow and connect:

The best way to follow my work is to sign up for my weekly Newsletter. I have a new podcast called Quitted. You can buy my book here.

You can find some of my old writings on my Substack; some on Hip Sobriety (this is currently archived), and old podcast episodes of Home on iTunes.

I have a forty day email course available for purchase to aid with recovery, you can find that here.

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