How to Stop Screwing Up: Twelve Steps to a Real Life and a Pretty Good Time

Martha Woodroof is an award-winning broadcast reporter whose stories are heard on National Public Radio and Marketplace. How to Stop Screwing Up is her account of how she used the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous not just to deal with her addictions, but to stop screwing her life up in many other ways as well. Woodroof cheerfully lays out the Twelve Steps (long the hallowed turf of those recovering from addictions) as a workable guide for anyone who wishes to replace a bad habit with a good one. A masterful storyteller, Woodroof weaves personal anecdotes--from wacky to worrisome to whimsical--among practical suggestions for working each step. Perhaps most refreshing, How to Stop Screwing Up encourages readers to work the steps privately and at their own pace, without any reliance on public disclosure or the dogma of religion. Woodroof's unique spiritual connection with her own Higher Power, whom she's dubbed "Alice," has filled an enormous void in her own life, and she encourages readers to solidify such a relationship in their own personally comfortable way. How to Stop Screwing Up fuses humor with humility, drawing on popular culture, Popeye and poetry to create a comfortable, even cozy, context for some startling insights delivered by a very fresh voice.