Drunk Mom

“An intense, complex and disturbing story, bravely and beautifully told. I read Drunk Mom with my jaw on the floor, which doesn't happen to me that often.” —Lena Dunham, author of Famesick and Not That Kind of Girl

Three years after giving up drinking, Jowita Bydlowska found herself throwing back a glass of champagne like it was ginger ale. “It's a special occasion,” she said to her boyfriend. And indeed it was. It was a party to celebrate the birth of their first child. It also marked Jowita's immediate return to full-blown alcoholism.

Her trips to liquor stores are in-and-out missions. Perhaps she’s being paranoid, but she thinks people tend to notice the stroller. Walking home, she stays behind buildings, in alleyways, taking discreet sips from a bottle she’s stored in the diaper bag. She knows she’s become a villain: a mother who drinks; a mother who endangers her baby. She drinks to forget this. And then the trouble really starts.

With brutal honesty, Jowita Bydlowska takes us through the binges and blackouts; the humiliations and extraordinary risk-taking; the self-deception and less successful attempts to deceive others. She shines a light on the endless hunger of wanting just one more drink, and one more again, while dealing with motherhood, anxiety, depression—and rehab.