Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

I liked to curl up inside my own suffering and stay for a while.

Sobriety has a way of sorting out your friendships. They begin to fall into two categories: people you feel comfortable being yourself with—and everyone else.

And I drank to calm myself, as much as I drank to keep myself revved.

I needed alcohol to drink away the things that plagued me. Not just my doubts about sex. My self-consciousness, my loneliness, my insecurities, my fears. I drank away all the parts that made me human, in other words, and I knew this was wrong.

fearing another person’s opinion never stops them from having one. And my focus on external judgment kept me from noticing the endless ways I’d judged myself.

Addiction was the inverse of honest work. It was everything, right now. I drank away nervousness, and I drank away boredom, and I needed to build a new tolerance. Yes to discomfort, yes to frustration, yes to failure, because it meant I was getting stronger. I refused to be the person who only played games she could win.

Personal essays work on this principle of inverted expectations. A writer friend described the arc like this: Let me tell you why it’s all their fault. Now let me tell you why it’s really mine.

Parents often try to correct the mistakes of their own past, but they end up introducing new errors.

When I cut out alcohol, my life got better. When I cut out alcohol, my spirit came back. An evolved life requires balance. Sometimes you have to cut out one thing to find balance everywhere else.

What’s the difference between a person who’s unfulfilled and a person who’s impossible to please?