The paradoxical thing about drinking alone—the insidious thing, really—is that it creates an illusion of emotional authenticity which you can see as false only in retrospect. When I drank by myself, the liquor truly seemed like the one thing that gave me access to my true feelings, a route to real emotion. Drinking and melting down; drinking and weeping; drinking and then sharing that pain with another person across the phone. I’m depressed. I’m lonely. Help me. But liquor is deceptive, the feelings it generates illusory: the next day you don’t remember the action or the feelings that
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