Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir

by Dolly Alderton

I always saw alcohol as the transportation to experience, but as I went through my twenties I understood it had the same power to stunt experience as it did to exacerbate it. Sure, there were the juicy confessionals you’d get out of people with dilated pupils in a loo cubicle; the old men with good stories who you’d otherwise never meet; the places you’d go; the people you’d kiss. But there was also all the work that wouldn’t get done when you were hungover. All the bad impressions you would make to potential friends because you were so drunk you could barely speak. All those lost conversations, in which someone tells you something really, really important, which are rendered meaningless because neither of you can remember it the next morning. All those hours spent lying in sweat and panic in your bed at five a.m., your heart beating as you stare at the ceiling, desperately willing yourself to sleep. All the hours lost in the cul-de-sac of your head torturing yourself with all the stupid things you said and did, hating yourself for the following few days.

Mmm yes