Drinking: A Love Story

Anyone who’s ever shifted from general affection and enthusiasm for a lover to outright obsession knows what I mean: the relationship is just there, occupying a small corner of your heart, and then you wake up one morning and some indefinable tide has turned forever and you can’t go back.

The knowledge that some people can have enough while you never can is the single most compelling piece of evidence for a drinker to suggest that alcoholism is, in fact, a disease, that it has powerful physiological roots, that the alcoholic’s body simply responds differently to liquor than a nonalcoholic’s.

the problem with self-transformation is that after a while, you don’t know which version of yourself to believe in, which one is true.

I didn’t see him again, or even talk to him again, but from that point on, I could hate him, instead of merely fear him.

A light bulb goes on and then—click!—just like that, it goes off again and you’re back in the dark, unable to see. Click: Fuck. Something is very wrong. I am in trouble. Click: I’m okay. Fine. Not to worry.

A woman I know named Liz calls alcoholism “the disease of more,” a reference to the greediness so many of us tend to feel around liquor, the grabbiness, the sense of impending deprivation and the certainty that we’ll never have enough. More is always better to an alcoholic; more is necessary. Why have two drinks if you can have three? Three if you

“Dad?” he’d say, looking up, looking perplexed. “Dad?” I hated that: it was like an exaggerated version of the way I so often felt, trying to gauge the depth of my father’s presence.

The drink released this current, let it stream up and out. There was a fuck-you element to it: a feeling of fuck you, I am going to get what I want, even if I don’t believe I deserve it. Frustration and shame and fear and self-loathing and release, all rolled into one, all liquified and drained away by drink.

My whole sense of reality was tied into the deception, built into the façades. To be honest would have meant dismantling the whole structure, all the assumptions and impressions about myself I’d worked so hard to create: I’m together, in control; I’m the person you want me to be. To tell the truth would have meant disclosing my full self, owning up