Drinking, Alchemy and Fear
Fear is the answer. I think, at the bottom, I was afraid to get sober. I was afraid that I couldn’t do it, I was afraid that I couldn’t cope with life’s challenges, afraid that I wouldn’t have a safe refuge to hide from the world, that I wouldn’t be able to stay sober and afraid that I really just couldn’t manage to live without drinking.
What Six Years of Sobriety Gets You
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.