Sublime

I still called it a “drinking problem”; I couldn’t make the leap to alcoholism because that was too great an admission, far too final.

Pain+Drink=Self-Obliteration.

self-conscious bravado.

that small observer, the part of me that still had some integrity and remained conscious and aware,

That, of course, is how an alcoholic starts not to notice it. Just this one time. That’s how you put it to yourself: I’ll just do it this one time, the same way a jealous woman might pick up the phone at midnight to see if her lover is home, or cruise slowly past his house to check his lights, promising herself that this is the last time. I know th

The truth gnaws at you. In periodic flashes like that I’d be painfully aware that I was living badly, just plain living wrong. But I refused to completely acknowledge or act on that awareness, so the feeling just festered inside like a tumor, gradually eating away at my sense of dignity. You know and you don’t know.

This is all a giant procrastination and you must deal with it. You must.

Alcoholics drink in order to ease the very pain that drinking helps create.