About the award-winning read: Raising the Bottom
When you don’t think what you do matters, think again … yes, it’s possible to make music out of your silent screams. The lives of mothers and their children often follow one another like beads on a necklace. Through these humorous, yet tragic stories of women, Raising the Bottom is a little book of big experience that will help you answer the questions: Do I drink too much? Is it possible that my search for fulfillment can end here? The truth is revealed in these pages and the answer is YES!
Based on a collective, three hundred years of experience from women who have been there and done that—you won’t be bored with statistical data and theoretical explanations from talking heads who spout theory but have little practical, first-hand knowledge or experience on how to dig yourself out of even the deepest hole. Aimed to start a social conversation about behaviors women partake in and thoughts that women have about drinking, but no one is brave enough to confront—until now!
Please join me as we travel on a journey that is all about changing and saving lives.
5 STAR review from Chanticleer!!
A mother’s wish for her daughter brought this guidebook into being; in it, author Lisa Boucher recounts her struggles and conquest of alcoholism, with specific advice for women trapped in the clutches of the disease.
Boucher provides ample autobiographical proof of her addiction. When growing up, her mother was “drowning in booze” and many childhood memories center on her mother wrecking the car, burning the supper, or just being nonfunctional. Her father reacted by acting the tyrant, using fear tactics in hopes that he could control his wife’s drinking. By the time she was twelve, Boucher was smoking, using pot, and drinking. Her first early marriage ended in divorce.
Most alcoholics begin slowly, perhaps drinking only on weekends, using booze as a reward, imagining the warm glow that the drink can provide and gradually spreading weekends out to include the entire week. It took Boucher years, and a dedicated, disciplined adherence to the 12 Step program, to realize that she was better off without drinking.
Ultimately, she says, alcoholics have a thinking problem – distortion, delusion, and denial constantly crowd in, and drinking suppresses those negative feelings. Her book focuses on women with alcohol addiction, and the first story in her collection of sobriety is perhaps the most poignant: her mother’s account of her years of alcoholism and road to recovery. After a rewarding phase of sobriety and dedication to helping others, her mother began to urge Boucher to chronicle her own experiences on the path up from the bottom.
Boucher’s work provides direct advice delivered in an accessible manner by someone who has walked the walk to recovery and is well qualified to talk the talk. She understands, for example, that some people can control their drinking, but she offers many clues as to how that perception can also be a deception. She urges a realistic approach: to quit drinking; you have to prepare yourself for the possibility of “losing friends, maybe losing your marriage, maybe losing everything.” Thus far, she has enjoyed nearly 30 years of sobriety spent in a professional and personal quest to assist other women who are carrying the burden of alcoholism. Her journey has led her to present ten stories from other women like herself, whose lives are peppered with violence, arrests, loss of jobs, partners and self-esteem, who now can proudly announce a “sobriety date” and a recovered existence.
Boucher examines the particular problems of women in the struggle against alcoholism, though her book would have realistic outreach for men also. She writes from hard experience that will be recognizable to anyone who has flirted with or entirely fallen for the false promise of the bottle. Her book can and should be read by women in the throes of the disease as well as those who seek to counsel and assist their sisters in need.
Indicators that alcohol may be taking over your life:
Are you unsure of whether or not you have a drinking problem? Do you worry that you may be following in the footsteps of an alcoholic parent but your friends only encourage you to join the party and not worry about it?
Here are some other indications that alcohol may be a problem:
- There is drama in all of your relationships. (The one common denominator is you.)
- You think all women are bitches. Your close friends are all males.
- You have an acute fear of failure, and you drink to erase that feeling of impending doom.
- When people don’t do what you want them to do, your go-to coping skill is to have a drink at them.
- You feel inferior in spite of great accomplishments.
- Enough is never enough—of anything: money, love, attention, success, etc. . . .
- Everything you do is full-speed ahead.
- You like that buzzed feeling. You chase that buzzed feeling a lot.
- You assume the victim role often. You like the attention you get from being the victim, and you wallow in self-pity.
- You mask emotional pain with alcohol/drugs/food/sex.
- You understand the sentiment: “treat me special so I can feel normal.”
- You are selfish and self-centered.
- You participate in activities such as art and wine, volleyball and beer, painting and vodka. You do these activities because of the alcohol involved, not because you love the activity.
- You bring your own stash to places and functions that don’t serve alcohol.
- You promise yourself you will only have one or two drinks, but you frequently miss that mark.
- You can’t quit drinking even for a few months. If you do manage to quit, you think about alcohol every day.
- You hide alcohol in your purse.
- You pre-drink/pregame, and you justify those pre-party drinks.
- You lie to cover up mishaps that occurred while drinking.
Alcohol is not the sole problem. As you can see from the list above (and believe me, this list is not all-inclusive), the behaviors have more to do with thinking and craving alcohol than they do with actually drinking alcohol. It’s helpful not to focus on quantity. The first step is to ask yourself honest questions and give honest answers.
