Drunk Mom: A Memoir

got drunk in a paradoxical way that numbs feelings and gives you access to them at the same time,

I had a fantasy of myself drinking just then, not drinking in the sophisticated, martini-glass sense but in the raging, obliterating sense, drinking to get drunk, drinking in order to yield to that rebellious urge and show everyone in the room just how angry I was, just how out of place I felt, just how self-destructive I could be in response.

No one who drank as I did wakes up on the edge of the abyss one morning and says: Things look pretty scary; I think I’d better stop drinking before I fall in. I was convinced I could go as far as I wanted, and then climb back out when it wasn’t fun anymore.

I once heard a woman at a meeting define alcoholism as a fundamental inability to be honest, not so much with other people but with the self.