Recovery is not a straight line. It's not a badge you earn once you've done everything right. It's a worn path of false starts, shaky mornings, unreturned messages, and hard conversations with yourself. "Almost Sober" is the book for the people in the middle of it. The ones who mean well but relapse. Who show up for meetings but skip some too. Who cry in silence and laugh through cravings. Who are tired of the shiny version of recovery that gets all the attention and are desperate for something more honest. This is not a manual. This is not about reaching a polished version of yourself that's always composed and enlightened. This is about what it actually looks like when you're clawing your way through change and nothing feels linear. Edgar Dishman doesn't offer any perfection here—he offers truth. Sharp, unfiltered, heartbreaking, often funny truth. He writes like someone who's been in the middle of the storm long enough to know that getting better doesn't mean being fixed. It means staying in the fight. Even when you're bruised. Even when it's inconvenient. Even when you're hungover with regret and trying again anyway. Dishman captures the reality of trying to stop a habit that once felt like survival. The nights that felt like defeat even though you made it through. The mornings where your hands shake as you pour the coffee and stare at the bottle you swore you'd throw out. The friends who mean well but don't get it. The family who's tired of the apologies. The brutal conversations you have with yourself when you know you're not fooling anyone. And still, somehow, you don't give up. You don't walk away from yourself entirely. The book offers something people rarely get when they're struggling—dignity in the chaos. Not because your choices are always right. But because your pain is real. Your effort is real. And even when your choices make you ashamed, your desire to change still deserves respect. Dishman walks readers through the patterns and triggers that keep recovery messy. Not as problems to solve, but as human reactions to deeper wounds that don't get fixed just because you went 30 days sober. You'll see yourself in the missed calls, the deleted texts, the promises to "start Monday" that stretch into months. You'll feel the weight of wanting to change without knowing what life feels like without your old escapes. And you'll find something strange in these pages: relief. Not because it gets easier, but because you won't feel alone in how hard it is. This is for the people who relapse after 60 days and have to walk back into the same rooms again. For the ones who go silent for weeks and then show up to therapy red-eyed and raw. For the ones who delete all their dealer's numbers and then scroll Instagram to find them again. For the ones who are trying, who really are, even when it doesn't look like it. Dishman gives language to the war between the version of you that wants to heal and the version of you that doesn't believe you can. He doesn't judge either one. He just holds them up to the light and says, "this is what it's like." And somehow, in the mess, there's something that looks like grace. Not the kind handed down from anyone else. The kind you earn by dragging yourself through the dark and still showing up the next day. Not because you have to. But because something inside you still believes it's worth it. "Almost Sober" doesn't tell you what to do. It shows you what it looks like to keep trying. It shows you the way guilt eats at your progress and how to separate self-punishment from responsibility. It shows you how small wins matter more than perfect streaks. It teaches you how to get back up without giving yourself a motivational speech, just a deep breath and another try. And it reminds you that sometimes just staying alive is the most courageous thing you can do.