The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath

by Leslie Jamison

shards.

How do plastic cups break into shards ?

I wasn’t thinking of the elderly white drunks gathering every morning at the nonwriters’ bars at the edges of our cornfields, veterans and farmers—the ones for whom intoxication wasn’t mythic fuel but daily, numbing relief, the ones who didn’t narrate their drunken binges as brushes against existential wisdom.

Booze let me live inside moments without the endless chatter of my own self-conscious annotation.

“Ever to confess you’re bored / means you have no / Inner Resources.” Wanting to get drunk—at least, as much as I wanted to get drunk—seemed like a similar confession.

pain isn’t less painful for being self-inflicted.

These changes were only ordinary, but I’d never stuck around to watch love become daily.

“I worry every day that there will never be anything that feels as good as drinking felt.”

I had been told that telling our stories would save us, but I wondered if this was always true. What if your story was just dead weight, a bundle of pages in a soggy paper grocery bag?

dry drunk—recovery-speak for someone who no longer drinks but isn’t in any recovery program—

Once I tried to write beyond myself, it seemed I had nothing to offer.

Whatever beauty comes from pain can’t usually be traded back for happiness.

Of course my pain was real, just like everyone’s. Of course it wasn’t quite like anyone’s, just like everyone’s.