Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

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and religion will remind you as well. We all want to believe our pain is singular—that no one else has felt this way—but our pain is ordinary, which is both a blessing and a curse. It means we’re not unique. But it also means we’re not alone. One of the best sayings I ever heard someone toss out at a meeting: If you’ve fucked a zebra, someone else has fucked two. I haven’t seen it hung next to the other slogans yet, but I’m hoping. The woman draws her purse onto her lap. Her life feels clouded, she says. She’s not sure who she is, or what she wants anymore. She tells me her story, which is carved with her own particulars, but the template is familiar. We arrive at a place of reckoning as strangers to ourselves. When she starts to cry, she reaches for Kleenex in her purse, apologizing once more. “You should have seen how much I cried when I quit,” I said. “Insane tears.” “It’s hard for me to believe you were ever like this,” she says. I try to explain to her. The despair, the frailty, the emotional hurly-burly—I lived there once, too. And she stares at me like I’m trying to sell her something. “It’s just that I look at you, and it’s clear you know who you are,” she says. I am wearing sweatpants pulled from the floor, because I was running late, and no makeup. Not my most Hollywood look. But it’s also true that I am not befogged with need and wanting anymore. I don’t know how it happened, or exactly how long it took. But I looked up one day and discovered, to my own shock as much as anyone else’s, that I was something approaching the woman I might like to be. “I was in the exact same place as you are,” I say, tears filling up my eyes. “I was lost for a very long time.” And even if she doesn’t understand, I can see that she believes me. As for whether she’ll stop drinking or not, I can’t tell you. I have no idea. Every sobriety tale is a cliffhanger. None of us knows how our story ends. But these conversations are good for me. They deliver me from my own sorrow. They remind me of my usefulness. They keep me from forgetting. How I got here, how I climbed out. I forgot too many things for far too long. Not just what we did last night, but who I was, where I wanted to go. I don’t do that anymore. Now I remember.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR SARAH HEPOLA’S writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine , The New Republic, Glamour, The Guardian, The Morning News, and Salon, where she is an editor. She has worked as a music critic, travel writer, film reviewer, sex blogger, beauty columnist, and a high school English teacher. Her website is sarahhepola.com. She lives in Dallas.
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Begin Reading Table of Contents New
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PRELUDE
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The guy isn’t bad-looking. Slight
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WOMEN WHO DRINK I was 33, and lying
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she did not get—but I’ve never
Page 13 and 14:
In my 20s, friends called with that
Page 15 and 16:
I discussed roofies with Aaron Whit
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a while, a columnist would come alo
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ONE
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when no one was looking, and I woul
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steps, not talking. As much as my f
Page 25 and 26:
Our home was on a major artery thro
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She’d transformed, like Olivia Ne
Page 29 and 30:
I threw up seven times. Hunched ove
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STARVED One of the curious aspects
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more successful her eating disorder
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orrowed. She couldn’t miss the si
Page 37 and 38:
To make it more confounding, Miles
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efused to be won. I drank cup after
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DRESSING IN MEN’S CLOTHES I start
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coffee. But that seemed like a very
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you to imperil our amazing friendsh
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I FINALLY GOT a boyfriend near the
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FOUR
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The production guy passed my desk a
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drank myself to the place where I w
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ehind me, and told him I was moving
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my Harp as soon I walked in the doo
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FIVE
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“Your key, mademoiselle,” said
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My friend Meredith lived in an apar
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“This was fun,” I said. He was
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OF COURSE. OF course I’d gone to
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like you should not be crying,” h
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SIX
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When the bottle was drained, I’d
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But no, really, I had it this time.
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off a gargantuan diamond. I thought
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INTERLUDE
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ain, which allowed his body to deve
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SEVEN
Page 85 and 86: But his once-sallow cheeks were ros
Page 87 and 88: announcing their baby. Nobody wants
Page 89 and 90: want to remain silent and unknowabl
Page 91 and 92: Bubba curled up alongside me when I
Page 93 and 94: EIGHT
Page 95 and 96: for me? My friends didn’t necessa
Page 97 and 98: ecause otherwise you have to go int
Page 99 and 100: said, and she was right. The next w
Page 101 and 102: fill-in-the-blank letter of apology
Page 103 and 104: NINE
Page 105 and 106: the tastes of a frat boy, or a grum
Page 107 and 108: Mine was a recipe for unhappiness.
Page 109 and 110: He tugged too hard, then I tugged t
Page 111 and 112: SEX My first date in sobriety was w
Page 113 and 114: 30s to stare down a personal profil
Page 115 and 116: and said, “Look, I dressed up for
Page 117 and 118: “I’m thinking: Well, that was f
Page 119 and 120: he’s impotent or not, I don’t k
Page 121 and 122: ELEVEN
Page 123 and 124: the scorn of strangers. They skip t
Page 125 and 126: Addiction was the inverse of honest
Page 127 and 128: I worshipped alcohol, and it consum
Page 129 and 130: THIS IS THE PLACE A few months befo
Page 131 and 132: Anna and I have had 20 years of the
Page 133 and 134: saying in midsentence. My dad loses
Page 135: from here, I told myself. There wil
Page 139: Contents COVER TITLE PAGE WELCOME D
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