Restless Reins (My Wild Ride to Recovery and Freedom)

She planned for adventure. She didn’t plan on becoming an alcoholic. From Wisconsin to Denver to Europe and beyond, Jo Ann Towle chased life with both hands—TV newsrooms, global travel, encounters with the famous and the reckless. Alcohol was her reliable companion: a liquid courage that fueled spontaneity and eased the wounds she refused to name. Until it owned her. Restless Reins is the story of one woman’s wild ride from running to reckoning—and the unexpected freedom waiting on the other side. Sober and clear-eyed at thirty, Jo Ann traded the bottle for a new calling, becoming one of the first women in the field of family intervention. Then she did the one thing she’d always dreamed: she got her horse. Funny, raw, and deeply honest, this memoir traces the wiring that made Jo Ann susceptible to addiction—and the same wiring that made her extraordinary. A story not just of recovery, but of a life stubbornly, joyfully lived on her own terms, by learning to trust her own heart above all else.