Catherine Gray

Bestselling Author of The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober

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Book Recommendations:

Recommended by Catherine Gray

The evolving Laura of Stash reveals herself to be at once loving, resentful, soft, spiky, generous, bitchy, big-hearted, petty... I rooted for her throughout. These apparent contradictions capture perfectly the shifting tectonic plates of personality that occur in a recovery done honestly - and done right. Brilliant. (from Amazon)

Stash: My Life in Hiding book cover

by Laura Cathcart Robbins·You?

“An emotionally absorbing and swiftly paced multisensory experience.” —The New York Times Book Review Named a Best Memoir of 2023 by Elle In the vein of Somebody’s Daughter, this wild, vivid addiction memoir from the host of the podcast The Only One in the Room “will inspire, awe, entertain, educate, and help so many readers” (Christie Tate, New York Times bestselling author) with a journey to sobriety and self-love amidst privilege and racism. After years of hiding her addiction from everyone—stockpiling pills in her Louboutins and elaborately scheduling her withdrawals between PTA meetings, baby showers, and tennis matches—Laura Cathcart Robbins is running out of places to hide. She has learned the hard way that even her high-profile marriage and Hollywood lifestyle can’t protect her from the pain she’s keeping bottled up inside. Facing divorce, the possibility of a grueling custody battle, and the insistent voice of internalized racism that nags at her as a Black woman in a startlingly white world, Laura wonders just how much more she can take. Now, with courageous and candid openness, she reveals how she started the long journey towards sobriety, unexpectedly found new love, and dismantled the wall she had built around herself, brick by brick. With its raw, finely crafted, and engaging prose, Stash is “emotionally riveting…usher[ing] in a new way for us to talk and read about the paradoxes of addiction, race, family, class, and gender.” (Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy).

Recommended by Catherine Gray

Holly Whitaker is a genius: brilliantly clever, fearless, snort-out-loud funny. (from Amazon)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An unflinching examination of how our drinking culture hurts women and a gorgeous memoir of how one woman healed herself.”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed “You don’t know how much you need this book, or maybe you do. Either way, it will save your life.”—Melissa Hartwig Urban, Whole30 co-founder and CEO The founder of the first female-focused recovery program offers a groundbreaking look at alcohol and a radical new path to sobriety. We live in a world obsessed with drinking. We drink at baby showers and work events, brunch and book club, graduations and funerals. Yet no one ever questions alcohol’s ubiquity—in fact, the only thing ever questioned is why someone doesn’t drink. It is a qualifier for belonging and if you don’t imbibe, you are considered an anomaly. As a society, we are obsessed with health and wellness, yet we uphold alcohol as some kind of magic elixir, though it is anything but. When Holly Whitaker decided to seek help after one too many benders, she embarked on a journey that led not only to her own sobriety, but revealed the insidious role alcohol plays in our society and in the lives of women in particular. What’s more, she could not ignore the ways that alcohol companies were targeting women, just as the tobacco industry had successfully done generations before. Fueled by her own emerging feminism, she also realized that the predominant systems of recovery are archaic, patriarchal, and ineffective for the unique needs of women and other historically oppressed people—who don’t need to lose their egos and surrender to a male concept of God, as the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous state, but who need to cultivate a deeper understanding of their own identities and take control of their lives. When Holly found an alternate way out of her own addiction, she felt a calling to create a sober community with resources for anyone questioning their relationship with drinking, so that they might find their way as well. Her resultant feminine-centric recovery program focuses on getting at the root causes that lead people to overindulge and provides the tools necessary to break the cycle of addiction, showing us what is possible when we remove alcohol and destroy our belief system around it. Written in a relatable voice that is honest and witty, Quit Like a Woman is at once a groundbreaking look at drinking culture and a road map to cutting out alcohol in order to live our best lives without the crutch of intoxication. You will never look at drinking the same way again.

Recommended by Catherine Gray

Hilda Burke is my favorite psychological expert because she is whip-smart, an excellent writer and she has an uncanny grasp of how to dismantle our behaviors and rebuild them into new ones. Everyone needs to put down their phones and pick up this book instead. (from Amazon)

Stop scrolling and start living! Build healthier relationships between you, your smartphone and all your devices, including tips to reduce social media obsession, notification anxiety and other unhealthy habits. Your smartphone is a powerful device that has fundamentally changed your life—no doubt improving it in many ways. And while you don’t need to give up your smartphone completely, if your day to day is filled with endless, anxiety-inducing checking, swiping and liking, then you need this helpful, step-by-step workbook to take back control of your life. Phone addiction is similar to gambling addiction and substance abuse. Its consequences include stress, depression, insomnia, intimacy issues and more. Written by an experienced psychotherapist, couples therapist and former telecommunications industry insider, The Phone Addiction Workbook’s program offers the blueprint for understanding addictive behavior and how it controls you. Weekly charts, practical tips and interactive activities help you stop unhealthy behavior and make lasting change.