ABSTRACT
Wendy, a self-proclaimed “biker chick” from Perth, Australia, had stopped drinking. She had stopped using heroin too. The only vice she held onto was her Parliament Lights, which she smoked with ritual regularity from the time she woke up until she went to bed. Without alcohol, she no longer knew how to socialize, so she isolated and waited every evening until it was time to sleep, wake, and go back to her corporate job as an administrative assistant. After a while of this, she contacted me and said she wanted help regaining her confidence for something resembling a social life. With time I realized that the “something resembling a social life” would be our relationship. She scorned the mention of Alcoholics Anonymous, particularly its “higher power,” and kept her former drinking buddies at bay. She emphatically declared that she would rather set the terms of her own “recovery.”
