Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

off a gargantuan diamond.
I thought: I want to not be having this conversation.
I thought: I want to not be abandoned by the people I love.
I thought: I want a fucking drink.
“I don’t know,” I said. She took my hand, and she did not let go for a long time. I wish I could say
this was the end of my drinking. Instead, Stephanie and I didn’t see each other for about a year.
What I told her at dinner was true, though. I did not know what I wanted. Or rather, I knew exactly
what I wanted, which was to never have to face a day without alcohol and to never have to face the
consequences of keeping it in my life. I wanted the impossible. This is the place of pinch and
bargaining that greets you as you approach the end. You can’t live with booze, and you can’t live
without it.
ONE MORE LAST great idea: I should move to Manhattan. Brooklyn was for kids, but the city was for
adults. I moved in the middle of an ice storm, on December 31, 2009, just in time for a fresh start.
My studio was 250 square feet. I misjudged its size, having first seen the place without furniture.
Living in a space that small was like stacking my belongings on the middle seat of an airplane. There
was nowhere to sit but my bed, so I stayed under the covers and drank with the lights out and the door
chained, like a blackout curtain drawn over my entire life. I stayed home most nights, because it kept
me out of trouble. Sometimes I watched soft-core porn for no other reason than I was given free
Showtime. I was down to mostly beer now. Beer was good to me. I have always relied on the
kindness of Stella Artois.
Anna came to New York to visit me. She slept beside me on the bed in that teensy studio and
never complained. She was five months’ pregnant, with no luggage other than a small backpack, and
she glowed. I felt like a bloated wreck next to her. She had great ideas, too: Maybe I could eat
healthier. Maybe more activity outdoors. She found a yoga studio in my neighborhood and brought
back a schedule. I promised I’d try. But I was too far gone. There is a certain brokenness that cannot
be fixed by all the downward dogs and raw juice in the world.
My therapist said to me, “I’m not sure it makes sense to keep doing these sessions if you’re not
going to stop drinking.” I must have looked stricken, because she refined it. “I’m worried the work of
therapy isn’t going to help if you don’t quit. Do you understand why I’m saying that?”
Yes, I understood: Fuck off. Go away. Done with you.
I did not want to give up therapy, any more than I wanted to give up my friends or the memories of
my evenings, but the need to hold on to booze was primal. Drinking had saved me. When I was a
child trapped in loneliness, it gave me escape. When I was a teenager crippled by self-consciousness,
it gave me power. When I was a young woman unsure of her worth, it gave me courage. When I was
lost, it gave me the path: that way, toward the next drink and everywhere it leads you. When I
triumphed, it celebrated with me. When I cried, it comforted me. And even in the end, when I was
tortured by all that it had done to me, it gave me oblivion.
Quitting is often an accumulation. Not caused by a single act but a thousand. Drops fill the bucket,
until one day the bucket tips.
On the evening of June 12, 2010, I went to a friend’s wedding reception in a Tribeca loft. It was
lovely. I had red wine, and then I switched to white. I was sitting at a big round table near the