Consequences

You take away the drink and you take away the single most important method of coping you have. How to talk to people without a drink. How to sit on the sofa and watch TV and not crawl right out of your own skin. How to experience a real emotion—pain or anxiety or sadness—without an escape route, a quick way to anesthetize it. How to sleep at night.

very few people who drink alcoholically can learn to feel like powerful players in their own lives; all the strength comes out of a bottle.

What is important now is to realize that alcohol does pick you up, but only from how far it kicked you down, never up to where you were before you started drinking.

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.

Sobriety is a prerequisite for reawakening authenticity.