Sublime

so glad that she’d turned out to be a writer, since if her drinking problem had been what it was and she’d been only a Xerox operator, she might have been tempted to go to A.A.

Every day meant two scoops out of the kibble. The bag became an hourglass counting down their final days with Belinda.

Over time the drink itself becomes the reward, the great compensation for our ability to keep it all together during the day, and to keep it all together so well.

It is facile to imply that smoking, alcoholism, overeating, or other ingrained patterns can be upended without real effort. Genuine change requires work and self-understanding of the cravings driving behaviors.

She goes off into some little room in her mind and pulls down the shade. Without stating so explicitly, that image had to do with the places alcohol can take you. It had to do with transportation, with the very real—and, to alcoholics, enormously seductive—phenomenon of taking psychic flight, ingesting a simple substance and leaving yourself behind

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.

“Well,” Jacaranda said, “I’m not exactly an alcoholic, I don’t think.” “You mean, not yet?” Rosamund asked. “Well . . .” she said. “It’s so lucky for you to be living in California. People don’t worry so much out there.”