Through a glass darkly

books on mothering. So there was some disbelief when it was announced that she had written a memoir of alcoholism and addiction. No one could be as sharp and sassy day in and day out if they had a drinking problem.

But she did, and in From Whiskey to Water she details epic benders and blackouts, crippling hangovers and a near-rape. “I was a highfunctioning alcoholic,” she says. “I hate labels but this one is true.” She managed because she lived within a set of rules. “I was never drunk at work, for example, I never drank before lunchtime. I had hundreds of rules.”

Once she set out to drink a case of red wine in front of the television and almost succeeded before she passed out, another time she woke up on the floor of her study with the computer mouse in her hand, having tried to order a French maid’s outfit online. There are many such anecdotes illustrating what became a yawing free fall. It ended one night in her driveway, after she drove home on the wrong side of the road. She had vomit in her hair and a husband in tears, and that was it. “I knew I’d broken every rule,” she says, “and I was going to lose my husband.” With the help of Alcoholics Anonymous she began what is now 14 years of recovery, but that is by no means the end of the story. She stopped drinking and started eating. And when she had ballooned to 102kg she started dieting obsessively and unsuccessfully. And then she started exercising manically, which became yet another addiction, and finally found long-distance swimming. “It’s the numbness I like,” she says. “There’s a peace to it, an oblivion. It’s what I looked for in the alcohol, and what I sought and couldn’t find in food.”