Drink: The Intimate Relationship between Women and Alcohol is a sobering look – pun intended – at the role that alcohol plays in the lives of women. Ann Dowsett Johnston adeptly combines a well-researched analysis of women and drinking in today’s society with her own personal walk through alcoholism into sobriety. By using her own drinking history as a jumping off point for her research, she provides a vulnerability that makes the book much more relatable than had she just reported her findings.

Drink focuses on the dangers that women specifically face as it relates to alcohol, ones very different than those faced by men. Differences that start early on since most women, often as girls, start drinking to escape from whatever it is that ails them – insecurity, fear, abuse and neglect.