Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

But no, really, I had it this time. One of my first Salon essays was about confronting my credit
card debt, which had gotten so out of control I had to borrow money from my parents. That was a low
moment, but it came with a boost of integrity. A free tax attorney helped me calculate the amount I
owed to the IRS—$40,000—and put me on a payment plan. My commitment was seven years, which
made me feel like the guy from Shawshank Redemption, tunneling out of prison with a spoon. But
finally, I was coming clean.
The credit card debt story introduced a new problem, however. The day after the piece ran, an
intern stopped by my desk. “What do you think about the comments on your piece?” she asked. “Pretty
insane, huh?”
“Totally,” I said, though I hadn’t actually read them. That night, fortified by a bottle of wine, I
waded into the comments. There were hundreds. Some people scolded me for my debt. Some mocked
me for not having enough debt. But they mostly agreed this was a worthless article written by a loser.
My mother used to tell me I was my own worst critic. Clearly, she wasn’t reading the comments.
I began losing my nerve. I started second-guessing everything—not just my writing, but my editing.
The Internet was a traffic game, scary and unfamiliar to me, and I felt torn between the real journalist
I wanted to be and the snake-oil salesman who had to turn a fluff piece into a viral sensation. I woke
up writing headlines, rearranging words like Scrabble tiles for maximum effect.
I started drinking at home more. A way to save money. A reward for a challenging day. I switched
up the bodegas each time, so none of the guys behind the counter would catch on.
When the first layoff hit Salon in the fall of 2008, I was spared. But I was frightened by the
tremors under my feet. My boss told me the names of the people who were let go, and I cried like
they’d been shot. Those people are so nice, I kept thinking. As if that had anything to do with it. As if
a global financial disaster is going to select for kindness.
The more unstable the world became, the more earned my reckless drinking felt. After a night out
with friends, I would stop by the bodega for a six-pack. Sunday nights became a terrible reckoning. I
would lie under my duvet, and I would drink white wine, watching Intervention, coursing with the
low-down misery that another Monday was on its way.
I should quit. I knew I needed to quit. After a doozy I would wake up and think “Never again,” and
by 3 pm I would think, “But maybe today.”
I HAD THIS great idea: I should go into therapy. My parents agreed to shoulder most of the bill, and I
felt guilty, because I knew the strain it would cause. But even worse would be not getting help at all.
My therapist was a maternal woman, with a nod I trusted. Whenever I thought about lying to her, I
tried to envision flushing a hundred-dollar bill down the toilet.
“What about rehab?” she asked.
Eesh. That was a little dramatic.
“I can’t,” I said. I couldn’t leave my cat. I couldn’t leave my colleagues. I couldn’t afford it. If I
was gonna do rehab, I wanted to be shipped off to one of those celebrity-studded resorts in Malibu,
where you do Pilates and gorge on pineapple all day, not holed up a dingy facility with metal beds.
Still, I longed for some intervening incident to make me stop. Who doesn’t want a deus ex
machina? Some benevolent character to float down from the clouds and take the goddamn pinot noir
out of your hands?