Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE FOR THE GROUP
My friend Charlotte met me for lunch on a sparkling day in fall.
“So you’re not drinking,” Charlotte said. “How’s that going?”
A fair question. It was, perhaps, the only question I cared about. But I could not take the emotional
splatter paint in my chest and translate it into words for her benefit. What could I possibly say? That I
could sense every drinker in the room, and I hated every one of them? Drinkers had started to throb
from every patio and sidewalk. A few days before, I’d gotten a whiff of a drunk homeless guy in the
subway and my mouth watered. Like a vampire.
“Good,” I told her, and stared at the floor for a long time, which is always superconvincing.
Charlotte is my friend Stephanie’s younger sister. As teenagers, we met on back porches with
domestic beer in our hands and shared the frustration of standing in Stephanie’s shadow. As adults,
we met at smoking windows with purple mouths to complain about the ways the world still placed us
second. She was one of my best friends in New York. We used to share rooms on girls’ weekends—
two days of binge drinking and sisterly bonding—and I would go home feeling so understood, my
stomach sore from laughing.
Now we sat at the table with nothing but awkwardness and salted butter between us. My glass of
Perrier was such flimsy compensation—all the fizz of champagne and none of its deliverance.
Why couldn’t I tell Charlotte the truth that I was miserable without drinking? Isn’t that what friends
provide—a soft landing for your complicated pain?
But I relied on the alcohol to loosen my tongue. Actually, I would say, leaning in after the second
glass, I’m a wreck.
I’m a wreck, too! the woman would say, because every female was hoarding some secret misery.
I couldn’t achieve such pliability at noon on a Saturday, though. And I didn’t want to bore
Charlotte with lame stories of 12-step meetings and day counts. (One of the many downsides of my
snarky attitude toward “recovery people” was the mortifying discovery I was one of them.) I felt
sorry for Charlotte, confined to sit across from such a wretch. Sobriety could be so isolating.
Sometimes I felt like I was living on an island, where all I did was hope a friend would float by, and
when they finally arrived, I began to wonder when they’d go away.
I was a fire starter once. I could talk to anyone when I was drinking. I played therapist, devil’s
advocate, clown. I actually used to brag I could be friends with Stalin. And it never occurred to me to
ask: Who the hell would want to be friends with Stalin?
But the woman who threw open her arms to despots had become the woman who couldn’t meet the
eyes of an old friend. I felt judged and evaluated by Charlotte. Not because of anything she said, or
any look she’d given me, but because judging and evaluating is what the old me would have done in
her place.
I used to hate it when a friend wasn’t drinking. Good for you! I’d say, but inside, I was steaming.
Drinking was a shared activity, and one person’s abstinence was a violation of protocol. I measured a
friend’s loyalty by her ability to stay by my side. Could she go another round? Would she take a shot