Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

for me? My friends didn’t necessarily drink as much as I did, but they were often the women who
stuck around till the lights came up. We remained in the foxhole as long as our comrades needed us.
Lisa and I used to joke that we couldn’t leave the bar till at least one of us cried. What were we
crying about? It’s hard to say. We were both editors, and we got tired and worn down. Our napkins
would be smudgy with mascara by last call, and I’d pat her on the back as we left. I think we did
some good work today.
A few months after I quit drinking, I went out with Lisa, and she didn’t even order a beer . I hated
that my sobriety had become her punishment.
My therapist didn’t understand my objection. “Is it possible Lisa likes supporting you?”
Maybe. But the arrangement didn’t seem right. I had a lot of vegetarian friends, and none of them
took away my bacon.
I think some part of me felt guilty for quitting. Drinking was central to our connections. A
necessary prop of companionship and commiseration. As a friend, I considered myself clutch.
Forever willing to split a bottle (or three) and play midwife to your sorrows.
But my drinking had not brought me closer to these women. In fact, the opposite happened. The
last time Charlotte and I drank together, I met her and some friends at a nice restaurant. I arrived late,
and the waitress was slow to bring my wineglass, so I grabbed the bottle from the middle of the table
and took a slug. My dress was on inside out. (“I got dressed in the dark,” I explained to Charlotte,
though I neglected to add, after three margaritas.) At a bar later, we started talking about female
orgasms, and nobody was listening to me, so I kept having to yell. Charlotte gave me $20 for the cab
ride home, and I wrote her an email the next day to thank her profusely. It took her two days to
respond, which was probably my first sign she was choosing her words.
I love you so much, she wrote me. But sometimes when you are drinking you act irrationally.
You were a little hostile on Friday, and it was extremely uncomfortable for the group.
My eyes skipped over the parts where she said how great I was and stuck on the other words
instead. Hostile. Extremely uncomfortable. For the group.
Women are so careful with each other’s feelings. We know the world shoots poison daggers into
our egos—and we shoot them into ourselves—and so we rush to each other’s sides for triage: Yes,
you were fine last night; yes, you are perfect exactly as you are . (Classic Onion headline: Female
Friends Spend Raucous Night Validating the Living Shit Out of Each Other.) We become such
reliable yes-women that any negative feedback is viewed as a betrayal, and the only place we feel
comfortable being honest is behind each other’s back. Did you hear what she said last night? Did
you see what she wore? These are the paths of least resistance—the unswerving praise, the gossip
dressed up as maternal concern—and it can be very tricky to break rank and say, out loud, to each
other: No, you weren’t fine at all.
There is no good way to confront a friend who is drinking too much, although doing it when you’re
not drunk is a good start. Anything you say will cause pain, because a woman who is drinking too
much becomes terrified other people will notice. Every time I got an email like the one Charlotte sent,
I felt like I’d been trailing toilet paper from my jeans. For, like, ten years. I also burned with anger,
because I didn’t like the fact that my closest friends had been murmuring behind cupped hands about
me, and I told myself that if they loved me, they wouldn’t care about this stuff. But that’s the opposite
of how friendships work. When someone loves you, they care enormously.
Now I was four months sober—in part because of exchanges like the one with Charlotte. I made