Beth McDonough has every reason to never return to the Twin Cities.
It was here that her second DWI triggered the end of her stint as a crime reporter for KMSP and nearly left her homeless.
But McDonough is back to celebrate nearly 17 years of sobriety and the launch of a new book, “Standby,” that details how alcoholism shattered her seemingly picture-perfect life and how she began to pick up the pieces.
“I hope that I’m inspiration in action,” McDonough, 57, said earlier this week at the Highland Park home of her friend Dede Ciprari. “When I told my therapist I was writing a book, she said, ‘You’re either brilliant or crazy.’”
McDonough started writing the book in 2009, shortly after returning from Hazelden treatment center and while under house arrest, a monitoring bracelet strapped to her ankle. She showed an early draft to Ciprari, who wasn’t impressed.
“It’s boring,” Ciprari told her. “You’ve told the facts. Now tell the rest of the story. How did it impact you? How did it affect other people?”
McDonough wasn’t ready to answer those questions. It wasn’t until she moved to Utah in 2020 that she was ready to put down in writing the most embarrassing and heart-breaking moments of her life.
The book, written in bite-size chapters and the kind of conversational tone you’d expect from a veteran broadcaster, reveals it all: the blackouts, shopping at different liquor stores so clerks wouldn’t suspect she was drinking so much, busting her teeth after falling down drunk in a parking lot the night before she’d be on CNN, stripping naked for a deputy at a workhouse, being disowned by her father after telling him she was an addict.