Drinking a Love Story by Caroline Knapp

Drinking a love story by Caroline describes a life of an alcoholic daughter of rich parents. Excessive
wealth, love and carelessness from her parents caused her to adopt life threatening habits. She later
on started consuming alcohol. She indulged in alcoholism so much that her life was completely
devastated. Caroline describes in details the bad outcomes of excessive consumption of alcohol. One
third of alcoholics are women. Every day she consumed more and more alcohol and that was causing
more damage to her life. Caroline Knapp, a psychotherapist, narrates a trajectory life of an alcoholic
daughter.

During Dream world stage, since her adolescence she had problems with drinking. She starts
consuming alchol in her early teens and became a regular drinker by the age of sixteen. Her father
was a psychoanalyst and a drinker himself who had affairs with several women. Her mother wasn’t
able to give attention to her daughter as she was already sufferring from breast cancer. She was born
in a prosperous family and her twin sister became a physician. However, Knapp became extremely
addictive to alcohol. In disillusionment stage, all the symtptoms of alcoholism started appearing her as
she approached her 20s.

She also started on unrealistic sex relationship with several men. This added to her unhealthy
conditon. During misery stage her thoughts and imaginations were immersed in a bottle of alcohol. A
daughter of well-to-do family had a love affair with alcohol that ruined her entire life. The story
narrates a true life image of an alcoholic and a warning for those who had started out habit of
drinking. During her enlightment stage she sometimes realized that this habit has completely ruined
her life. She struggles to find out contact with those who are even more alcoholic than her, in order to
comfort her that she’s not the alone.

Her parents were also alcoholics. However, she tries to come-up with this problem by improving her
self-image and recovery from this state. “At the same time Meg's story - her shyness and shame and
confusion -is achingly familiar. Bad, semi-consensual drunken sex: so many women I know did this.
So many still do. At least one quarter of the 17,592 students surveyed in a 1995 Harvard School of
Public Health study on campus drinking said they had suffered an unwanted sexual advance as a
result of drinking; that same year, a Columbia University study reported that alcohol plays a role in
ninety percent of rapes on college campuses.
” (Knapp) In her mid 20s she seeked help with psychotherapist to solve her problems with eating.
Because of her excessive consumption of alcohol she lost her apetite, a condition called anorexia.
However, duirng her treatment she kept on drinking. Regular consumption of alcohol made her very
distressed and she gradually started realizing the cause of her unhappiness. During mutual respect
stage, her both parents died of cancer. Loss of her parents, her father’s several comments and her
carelessness while holding a child of her friend moved her to undergo an alcoholic anonymous
rehabilitation program.

Though she was successful as a journalist, she was unable to control her behavior, her unhealthy
condition and developed distorting unwanted sex relationship with several men. She found her love
affair with an alcohol as a synonymous to an unfaithful and unresponsive man, who had destroyed
her life completely. Her recovery would be to end this relationship from its roots and to take a divorce
from this love. Those who consume alcohol usually indulge in this habit in order to avoid facing
difficulties in life.

Caroline brings to their awareness that drinking is not the solution as it makes the problem worse. By
drinking one cannot avoid those difficulties and problems but in fact have other severe health
problems incurred. This can make their lives miserable. The story is a very good advice for drinkers
about this life threatening habit. She sketches a true picture of an alcoholic daughter and its miserable
outcomes on women of all age who have this habit. References Knapp, Caroline. Drinking A Love
Story.

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