Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

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I could get my fingers around. But in the battle for a better life, fame is a flimsy weapon. Those rooms were not divided into famous people and nonfamous people. Just people who had all reached for the same fix. Sobriety helped to knock a few false prophets out of me. Alcohol. Other people’s approval. Idealized romantic love. So what should I worship now? I didn’t care to find the answer, honestly, but the program kept placing one word back in front of me, even after I pushed it away. God. The word made me squirm. Like so many people, I resisted AA, in part, because of the words “higher power.” Even the major work-around of a “God of my understanding” was way too much God for me. I was raised around conservative Christians who did not always strike me as charitable. I was puzzled by the demented winner-takes-all spirit of traditional religion: I go to heaven, and you do not. College taught me religion was the opium of the masses. God was for weak people who couldn’t handle their own lives, and it took me a long time to understand that, actually, I was a weak person who couldn’t handle my own life, and I could probably use all the help I could get. The “higher power” idea came to me in increments. Like sobriety itself, it was not a spectacular, flailing jump but a tentative inching in the same direction. I thought a lot about storytelling. That was a power way bigger than me. When I listened to someone’s story, when I met the eyes of a person in pain, I was lifted out of my own sadness, and the connection between us felt like a supernatural force I could not explain. Wasn’t that all I needed? A power bigger than me? I needed to be reminded I was not alone. I needed to be reminded I was not in charge. I needed to be reminded that a human life is infinitesimal, even as its beauty is tremendous. That I am big and small at once. I worship the actual stars now, the ones above us. Anna lives out in West Texas, where the night sky burns electric, and her back patio is the first place I understood the phrase “a bowl full of stars.” The stars tilt around you, and you can feel the curvature of the earth, and I always end up standing on my tippy-toes out there, just to be two inches closer to the rest of the galaxy. My spiritual life is in its infancy. But the major epiphany was that I needed one. A lot of my friends are atheists. We don’t talk much about belief, and I wouldn’t presume to know theirs, but I think their stance comes from an intellectual allergy to organized religion, the great wrongs perpetrated in the name of God, the way one book was turned into a tool of violence, greed, and bigotry. I don’t blame them. But I wish belief didn’t feel like a choice between blind faith and blanket disavowal. I’m a little freaked out by the certainty on either side. No one has an answer sheet to this test. How we got here, what we are doing—it’s the greatest blackout there is. Whether God exists or not, we need him. Humans are born with a God-shaped hole, a yearning, a hunger to be complete. We get to choose how we fill that hole. David Foster Wallace gave a commencement address at Kenyon College, a speech that is a bit like a sermon for people who don’t want to go to church: In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
I worshipped alcohol, and it consumed me. I worshipped celebrity and the machines of external validation, and it cratered me. To worship another human being is to set yourself up for failure, because humans are, by their nature, flawed. I worshipped David Foster Wallace once. In some ways, I still do. His suicide is another reminder that all the knowledge and talent in the world will not stop your hands from tying the noose that will hang you. I seek all the sources of comfort I can find. Music. Old friends. Words that leave my fingers before the sun rises. My guitar, strummed in an empty room. The trees as they turn, telling me that I am not a towering redwood but another leaf scraping the ground. I also hit my knees each morning and bow to the mystery of all I don’t know, and I say thank you. Does anyone hear me? I don’t know. But I do.
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Begin Reading Table of Contents New
Page 5 and 6:
PRELUDE
Page 7 and 8:
The guy isn’t bad-looking. Slight
Page 9 and 10:
WOMEN WHO DRINK I was 33, and lying
Page 11 and 12:
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
Page 19 and 20:
ONE
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when no one was looking, and I woul
Page 23 and 24:
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
Page 31 and 32:
STARVED One of the curious aspects
Page 33 and 34:
more successful her eating disorder
Page 35 and 36:
orrowed. She couldn’t miss the si
Page 37 and 38:
To make it more confounding, Miles
Page 39 and 40:
efused to be won. I drank cup after
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DRESSING IN MEN’S CLOTHES I start
Page 43 and 44:
coffee. But that seemed like a very
Page 45 and 46:
you to imperil our amazing friendsh
Page 47 and 48:
I FINALLY GOT a boyfriend near the
Page 49 and 50:
FOUR
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The production guy passed my desk a
Page 53 and 54:
drank myself to the place where I w
Page 55 and 56:
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
Page 63 and 64:
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
Page 75 and 76: But no, really, I had it this time.
Page 77 and 78: off a gargantuan diamond. I thought
Page 79 and 80: INTERLUDE
Page 81 and 82: ain, which allowed his body to deve
Page 83 and 84: 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: Addiction was the inverse of honest
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 and 136: from here, I told myself. There wil
Page 137 and 138: ABOUT THE AUTHOR SARAH HEPOLA’S w
Page 139: Contents COVER TITLE PAGE WELCOME D
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Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

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