My Year of Not Getting Sh*tfaced

Author: Pamela Power
Publisher: Jonathan Ball
Reviewer: Hazel Makuzeni
From the author of three novels and co-author of another, a bestseller in South African terms, comes this candid journal of her journey to moderate drinking. Pamela Power is also a television scriptwriter and script editor, a mother and wife. How she was able to pull through – she begins her voyage to sobriety at the height of the Covid-19 

epidemic - and get a book deal is sheer tenacity and anguish. You see at the time of writing this journal, she was busy with not only one, but three television shows. Writing a blog every week. And, working on the novel that would become a bestseller. Oh, and she and hubby got Covid during the course.
Road to not getting sh*tfaced. It all started on Mother’s Day 2021. The author got totally pissed at her friend’s place while relishing a Mother’s Day lunch. Like mwah (the reviewer), after a heavy session of drinking, the author did not remember a thing on the following day. “I was paralysed by a severe shame attack…,” she says. I know the feeling. Good friends, who were at the said lunch, filled her in on her abysmal escapades which included picking a fight with a stranger, falling and hurting her hand and shin badly. Unlike the author, I tend not to entertain reports back about my erstwhile behaviour after getting shi*tfaced and blacking-out. What I cannot undo, I cannot undo. And why were you taking notes? Are you a reporter by profession? These questions immediately silence the concerned citizen and I’m left to deal with my hangover in dread.
Back to the book. Pamela treks her relationship with alcohol back to her uneasy relationship with her parents. Her mother was fully unpleasant when drunk, and her father could be cruel. The demands of her workload are crippling, but as a freelancer she has no job security so she soldiers on. On the home front, her family’s finances are a disaster with hubby not having a steady income. Alcohol is definitely a distraction, to supress the anxiety about money, her kids and the sadness of losing loved ones to Covid. In fact, she has been self-medicating with alcohol for 35 years at least. But as she says, “Getting drunk and falling over might be funny in your twenties, less so in your fifties.” In this entertaining read, she takes stock of her drinking habits and is mindful of how she consumes liquor.  
As a soon-to-be reformed binge drinker, myself, I’m in total agreement with the author: moderation is the key for some. Being wary of how much booze I consume at once has staved off the black-outs for some time now😊 Since embarking on this journal, the author has not been drunk once in 365 days. Cheers to that.       ​