Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget - Sarah Hepola

ehind me, and told him I was moving to Ecuador.
The travel part of my story is one of the greatest times of my life. Scary, but thrilling: Ecuador,
Peru, Bolivia. I read books half the day and spent the rest of the hours however I wanted.
But be careful when you finally get happy. Because you can become greedy for the one thing you
don’t have.
I missed drinking. This new world was grand, but I didn’t feel complete without that foamy
abandon. I thought about drinking all the time. If only I could drink again, then I could lose myself to
this handsome stranger and not be hobbled by my own nagging insecurities. If only I could slurp down
those pisco sours like the other students at the Spanish school, I could let foreign words spill out of
my mouth like divine prophecy instead of being so scared to speak in Spanish that I ducked eye
contact. I was 27 years old, and I had everything—except the delicious communion of two beers,
maybe three. I wanted so badly to dip a toe in that river again. Dip a toe, or maybe fall in.
My fever grew stronger, and I began to itch for the drama of drinking. You know what I miss? A
hangover. You know what I want? A night I regret. My shins covered in eggplant bruises, some
unshaven backpacker at the book depot, his hands all over me.
Three months into my trip, Ecuador qualified for the World Cup for the first time in history, and I
didn’t give a rip about soccer, but I needed to celebrate. A party broke out in the square. I cracked
open a 20-ounce beer, took a swig, and felt a loosening that traveled down to my toes. Two hours and
two beers later, I was crazy-dancing to Shakira, the Spanish-language version, on the front patio of
my lodge alone. Fuck judgment. Fuck discretion. I was back.
When I returned to the States, I struggled to explain to my friends why I had started drinking again.
After all, not much time had passed since I explained to them why I quit. But I told them I was
healthier now. I would be careful. My friends mostly nodded and tried to figure out which reaction
would be supportive and which would be naive. “People come in and out of sobriety all the time,” I
said, and as we rambled into our late 20s, these were the bumpy roads we had to navigate: Marriages
fail, lesbians start dating men again, dreams turn out to be the wrong dreams.
A few weeks later, I had another blackout. This time in front of 300 people.
I HAD BEEN hanging out with a trio of comedians, and their ability to extemporize dazzled me. Each
time they unhinged their subconscious, hilarity fell out. When one of them asked me to perform at an
event he was hosting, I wanted to be bold enough to join them. Take a chance. Risk failure. As Elliott
Smith sang: “Say yes.”
So I said yes, but to what? I had no improv skills and couldn’t play an instrument. We settled on
what we called a “Drunken Q&A.” I would get buzzed, and audience members could ask me anything
they wanted. Easy, right? I had no idea hundreds of people would show.
I also didn’t expect the guy I’d been seeing in Dallas to come. Lindsay and I had been dabbling in
a relationship for two weeks, long emails and after-hours phone calls, and I was wrestling with how
serious we should be. I liked him, but did I like him enough? He surprised me that night—driving
three hours to watch me perform in Austin, a grand gesture that made me nervous and spazzy. I was
excited he wanted to be there but worried I couldn’t match his enthusiasm, or the adoring way he
looked at me, and the answer to this pinwheel of anxiety was to drink. A lot.
By the time the show started, I was stumbling across the open grassy area, stopping people who