Quitter cover art

Quitter

A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Quitter

By: Erica C. Barnett
Narrated by: Jean Ann Douglass
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends December 16, 2025 11:59pm GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Only £0.99 a month for the first 3 months. Pay £0.99 for the first 3 months, and £8.99/month thereafter. Renews automatically. Terms apply. Start my membership

About this listen

 "Barnett's prose style is brassy and cleareyed, with echoes of Anne Lamott." --Beth Macy, The New York Times Book Review

"Emotionally devastating and self-aware, this cautionary tale about substance abuse is a worthy heir to Cat Marnell's How to Murder Your Life." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A startlingly frank memoir of one woman's struggles with alcoholism and recovery, with essential new insights into addiction and treatment

Erica C. Barnett had her first sip of alcohol when she was thirteen, and she quickly developed a taste for drinking to oblivion with her friends. In her late twenties, her addiction became inescapable. Volatile relationships, blackouts, and unsuccessful stints in detox defined her life, with the vodka bottles she hid throughout her apartment and offices acting as both her tormentors and closest friends.

By the time she was in her late thirties, Erica Barnett had run the gauntlet of alcoholism. She had recovered and relapsed time and again, but after each new program or detox center would find herself far from rehabilitated. "Rock bottom," Barnett writes, "is a lie." It is always possible, she learned, to go lower than your lowest point. She found that the terms other alcoholics used to describe the trajectory of their addiction--"rock bottom" and "moment of clarity"--and the mottos touted by Alcoholics Anonymous, such as "let go and let God" and "you're only as sick as your secrets"--didn't correspond to her experience and could actually be detrimental.

With remarkably brave and vulnerable writing, Barnett expands on her personal story to confront the dire state of addiction in America, the rise of alcoholism in American women in the last century, and the lack of rehabilitation options available to addicts. At a time when opioid addiction is a national epidemic and one in twelve Americans suffers from alcohol abuse disorder, Quitter is essential reading for our age and an ultimately hopeful story of Barnett's own hard-fought path to sobriety. Addiction & Recovery Alcoholism Mental Health Mental Health Awareness Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Women Health Memoir Substance abuse Nonfiction Addiction Memoirs

Listeners also enjoyed...

 I Forgot to Stay Sober: How I Nearly Died Kicking My Addiction to Alcohol cover art
Wasted cover art
This Naked Life cover art
Glorious Rock Bottom cover art
Dry cover art
Drinking cover art
We Are the Luckiest cover art
High Achiever cover art
Strung Out cover art
The Accidental Soberista cover art
Drinking Games cover art
A Little Bit Broken cover art
My Fair Junkie cover art
This Will Be Funny Later cover art
Dying for a Drink cover art
The Sober Diaries cover art
All stars
Most relevant
narrated excellent, story was fascinating and definitely shocked me to learn there are deeper rock bottoms, especially with your own health.

must read for those who have failed more than once

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
loved it , I really needed this book, I have relapsed so much and it's the REAL recovery not what the movies make it out to be. You beautifully told the story of relapse and recovery I so badly needed the relation. READ!!!

True story of addiction

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
As an addict in recovery for some years now, I have read and listened to a LOT of memoirs and stories dealing with alcoholism. I find - as a someone who likes to find strength in the experiences others - that it really helps me process my own journey. There's a of stuff out there that spares the details that only we (the few) have truly experienced. They sanitise it and - as far as I'm concerned - lessen the seriousness of the catastrophe that is alcoholism. This book is very different. As it progresses, we are spared nothing. Everything is shared TRULY and earnestly. Inner thoughts, awful mornings, failures and successes. I really, really think it's the best I've read in a long, long while. If you have a problem, OR are recovering and need strength and hope, I'd give this a go. I adored it and it has helped me (even though I am 7 years into sobriety) enormously.

the best out there

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The honesty of this book is the stand-out for me. It has been very well written and the narration is excellent. I have read many stories of addiction and recovery, this isn't rock-star stuff this could (and does) happen to anyone of us. One tiny criticism is the final relapse is glossed over almost as though it's "we've been here before, I won't bore you with the details again" yet it was as important to understand as the first relapse. One of the best biographical books covering alcoholism you will find.

Harrowing, truthful and well written

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I found that at times this was difficult to hears. So many relapses and a reminder that unless you keep the focus alcoholism will keep on coming after you. I'm glad I didn't read this at the start of my journey.

A story of character.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews