The hardest part of recovery is not quitting. It is becoming someone new.
Dry Drunk explores one of the most overlooked and misunderstood phases of recovery: what happens when the substance is gone, but the mindset remains.
This book moves beyond sobriety as abstinence and examines the emotional, psychological, and behavioral patterns that can persist long after drinking or using stops. Irritability, restlessness, resentment, isolation-these are not failures of recovery, but signals of unfinished internal work.
Written with clarity and restraint, Dry Drunk does not offer a program or prescribe a path. Instead, it provides an honest reflection on the gap between being sober and truly living in recovery. It challenges readers to confront the subtle ways addiction can continue to shape thinking, relationships, and identity.
Part of The Politics of Addiction series, this book is for those who have stopped using-but recognize that stopping was only the beginning.
Warfield, Steven: -
With more than fifty years of lived experience in chemical dependency and over fifteen years of sustained abstinence, he brings a rare blend of insight, honesty, and compassion to The Politics of Addiction series.
Steven Warfield is a graduate of Penn State University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree with highest distinction from the Honors Program. Recognized as the Outstanding Social Science Student in 2005 and recipient of the Presidential Scholarship, he served as president of several academic honor societies, including Pi Gamma Mu and Alpha Sigma Lambda.
His professional life has taken him across disciplines and continents. In China, he designed and taught university-level courses in English conversation and composition, authoring two instructional guides for Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University. In the United States, he built a respected career in journalism and technical writing, with feature articles and cover stories published throughout the optical industry. He was also a finalist in the 2014 Central PA Magazine Writing Contest.
Beyond his academic and professional work, Steven is a storyteller whose fiction explores technology, identity, and the edges of consciousness. But his writing on recovery is deeply personal. With more than fifty years of lived experience in chemical dependency, professional and academic training, with over fifteen years of sustained abstinence, he brings a rare blend of insight, honesty, and compassion to The Politics of Addiction.
He now writes full-time in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
