The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath

by Leslie Jamison

I wasn’t sure God existed, but if He did exist, there were definitely a couple things He could do for me.

That fall, I put an incredible amount of effort into talking to my therapist about everything but drinking.

My drinking wasn’t that. I hadn’t set off a bomb in the middle of my own life. It had just grown small and curdled.

Dave was someone who could get excited about an octopus, or a dilapidated boomtown, and the fact that he could bring out that sense of wonder in me made me want to give it back to him.

Something about desire itself, its naked and unartful articulation, had started to seem beautiful.

Maybe she drank like I drank; maybe she needed to hear from me that your drinking could be boring and still pretty fucking demoralizing.