Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

But his once-sallow cheeks were rosy. “Come to a meeting with me,” he said, and I did.
What I remember best about that first meeting is a jittery reluctance to brand myself with the
trademark words. I’d seen the movies, and I knew this was the great, no-backsies moment: I’m Sarah,
and I’m an alcoholic. For weeks, I’d been kicking the sheets, trying to get square on that issue. What
did it mean to be an alcoholic? If I said I was one, and I turned out to be wrong—could I change my
answer?
Alcoholism is a self-diagnosis. Science offers no biopsy, no home kit to purchase at CVS. Doctors
and friends can offer opinions, and you can take a hundred online quizzes. But alcoholism is
something you must know in your gut.
I did, even if I was reluctant to let the words pass my lips. I’d read The Big Book, AA’s essential
book of wisdom, and experienced a shock of recognition that felt like being thrown into an electric
fence. Other people cut out brown liquor, too? Other people swear off everything but beer? Even
the way I came into AA was textbook. It was, indeed, the origin story of the group. Bill Wilson spent
an evening with a drinking buddy who was clean, and their meeting became the first click of an
epiphany. If that guy can get sober, so can I. AA had been shrouded in mystery to me, but it can be
boiled down to this: two or more drunks in a room, talking to each other.
After that first meeting with my friend, I decided to give it a try. I did not have the most winning
attitude. I would sit in the back with my arms crossed and sneer at the stupid slogans. “One day at a
time,” “Let go and let God,” which was clearly missing a verb at the end. I had mental arguments with
nearly everyone who spoke. (I usually won.)
It worked anyway. I stayed sober for a year and a half, which is like dog years to a 25-year-old. I
heard unforgettable tales in those rooms. I was moved in ways that startled me. Still, I never settled
in. A few members took me to brunch one afternoon, all eager hands and church smiles. I sat in that
diner—the same diner I used to frequent with my college friends on hangover mornings, when we
showed up with cigarette smoke in our clothes and casual sex in our hair—and I hoped to God no one
saw me with these middle-age professionals. I shoveled gingerbread pancakes into my mouth and
forced myself to laugh at their jokes, and I worried this would be sobriety: a long series of awkward
pancake lunches with people who made me feel old and ordinary. I preferred feeling young and
superior.
When I decided to start drinking again at 27, nothing could have convinced me to stay. No
persuasive case could have been launched to keep me out of the churning ocean once I decided to
swim in it again. For a woman who has hope, logic is the flimsiest foe. Yes, I had admitted I was an
alcoholic, and I knew in my heart I didn’t drink like other people. I also thought: If I play my cards
right, I could get ten more years. Ten more years of drinking is a long time!
As more time passed, I began to wonder if I’d overreacted with that whole AA business. This is
one of the most common strains of alcoholic doublethink, and it is especially pernicious, because
there is no objective way to sort out which person actually did overreact and which person is crotch
deep in denial. I was the latter, but I was also 27. I spied a window of opportunity and zip-bamboom.
I was headed into the waves once more.
“I’ll probably be back one day,” I told my friend, but I’m not sure I meant it, because ten years
almost did pass, and then I was like: Screw that.
Screw that. For years, this was my attitude toward AA, the place that reached out its hand to me
when I was on my knees. But becoming a professional drunk demands you distance yourself from the