Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

POWER BALLAD
People who quit drinking become terrified they will lose their power. They believe booze makes
them the people they want to be. A better mother. A better lover. A better friend. Alcohol is one hell
of a pitchman, and perhaps his greatest lie is convincing us we need him, even as he tears us apart.
I needed alcohol to write. At least, that’s what I believed. I had no idea how people wrote without
alcohol, which is a bit like wondering how people construct buildings without alcohol or assemble
watches without alcohol. I’m sure it happens all the time, but I’d never done it.
Years ago, when I worked at the Dallas paper, I used to sit at the bar with the other writers, and we’d
elbow each other out of the way to reach the punch lines. Writers are often insecure by nature, but in
those hours I felt indomitable. We could disagree about music, politics, the use of the serial comma,
but we never disagreed about drinking.
Writers drink. It’s what we do. The idea made me feel special, as though I got a pass on certain
behaviors, as though self-destruction were my birthright. The bar also made me feel like real work
was getting done, even if the real work turned out to be arguing the merits of Saved by the Bell.
I liked talking about writing much more than actually writing, which is an unspeakably boring and
laborious activity, like moving a pile of bricks from one side of the room to the other. Talking about
writing was exciting. It was all possibility. Let’s talk about the story at the bar! Kick it around over
a few drinks, brainstorm that bad boy. And in those sinking moments when I realized two hours had
passed, and no one had brought up the story we were supposed to fix, I had the perfect antidote in
front of me. Another glass of guilt-be-gone.
But booze wasn’t merely a collective procrastination tool. It was the tool I took home with me
when I needed to sit by myself and get the words out onto the page. Writing is a lonely profession.
Nobody wants to walk in darkness alone.
Alcohol was an emancipator of creativity. It silenced my inner critic. It made me bigger and
smaller, and my writing required both delusions: to believe everyone would read my work, and to
believe no one would. I even loved writing hungover, when I was too exhausted to argue with myself,
allowing words to tumble onto the page.
If I ever grew anxious about the empty bottles my work required, I could wrap myself in an
enabling legend. Writers drink. It’s what we do. As long as the work gets done, you can coast on
these words for a very long time.
But the dynamic pivoted for me. The drain and the time suck of my habits became too much to
tolerate. I was no longer a writer with a drinking problem. I became, as Irish author Brendan Behan
once said, “a drinker with a writing problem.” Something had to go, and given how conjoined my
writing and drinking were, I figured it had to be both.
Well, actually, I did have a history of writing without alcohol. It was called childhood. Kids are
wizards of imagination, and I was one of those youngsters scribbling all day long. Children are not
hobbled by an awareness of others or the fear of people’s judgment. Children don’t have to face
professional failure, public disinterest, the criticism of colleagues, lacerating Twitter commentary,