I said yes to please you, and then I did whatever I wanted. I thought of it as “being nice.” Now I think of it as “being manipulative.”

Cramming food into my mouth brought a rush of rebellion, but I was never sure who I was fighting.

She and I had always been control freaks. Yet we both drank to the point of losing control. It sounds contradictory, but it makes total sense. The demands of perfectionism are exhausting, and it’s hard to live with a tyrant. Especially the one in your own mind.

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

I wanted to fast-forward through this dull segment. I want to skip to the part when I was no longer broken and busted

Drinking had saved me. When I was a child trapped in loneliness, it gave me escape. When I was a teenager crippled by self-consciousness, it gave me power. When I was a young woman unsure of her worth, it gave me courage. When I was lost, it gave me the path: that way, toward the next drink and everywhere it leads you. When I triumphed, it

Tilting the wide brim of a martini glass toward the sky to catch whatever plunked into it.

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.

I knew AA worked miracles. What nobody ever tells you is that miracles can be very, very uncomfortable.