Drinking: A Love Story

as long as I don’t drink, as long as I expose my doubts and fears to the clear light and refuse to drown them in liquor, I believe I’ll find my way, as a person, as part of a couple.

Alcoholics compartmentalize: this was classic behavior, although I wouldn’t have known that back then. I’ve heard the story in AA meetings time after time: alcoholics who end up leading double lives—and sometimes triple and quadruple lives—because they never learned how to lead a single one, a single honest one that’s based on a clear sense of who

Smooth and ordered on the outside; roiling and chaotic and desperately secretive underneath, but not noticeably so, never noticeably so.

At heart all addictions are driven by the same impulses and most accomplish the same goals; you just use a different substance, or take a slightly different path, to get there.

the way to the other side of a bad feeling is through it, not around it.

alcohol is what protected me from growing up.

self-conscious bravado.

“This is all a giant procrastination. There is a split within you and you must deal with it. You must.”

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.