The Compulsive Woman by Sandra Simpson LeSourd (Chosen Books/Fleming H. Revell: $12.95).

“How to break the bonds of addiction to food, television, sex, men, exercise, shopping, alcohol, drugs, nicotine and much more,” runs the informal subtitle of this curious book, part autobiography, part lavish quotations from popular psychology.

Yes, Sandra Simpson LeSourd really has been addicted to all of the above. And the basic reason is a bad start, beginning with fondling by a kindly uncle, an action she terms “sexual abuse”; her childhood home is described as dysfunctional because her cold, distant parents divorced when she was of tender years.

These traumas, plus the pressure of working in a glamorous world as companion to the winner of each year’s Miss America Pageant, lead to heavy drinking. When her first marriage to a dream-like doctor in Billings, Mont., ends in divorce, triggered by years of taking the pleasures of civilization too seriously, LeSourd remarries, this time to a long-suffering lawyer.

Mixing prescription drugs and alcohol ends in a suicide attempt. Finally, after being hospitalized in a grim institution, the author begins a steady climb to recovery. Along the way, we’re treated to the 1985 National Council on Alcoholism Statistics, tidbits from “The Cinderella Complex,” quotes from “Women Who Love Too Much” and snippets from talk-show hostess Sonya Freidman, as if LeSourd wants desperately to validate her own experience by referring to “experts.”