The shape of addiction is circular. When you drink to deal with feelings like that, it’s impossible to get over them. When you drink to drown out fear and rage, you quite literally disassociate from them, and you stop trusting yourself, stop trusting your own judgment and integrity. At one of the very first AA meetings I went to, the speaker was a man in his late thirties who spent a lot of time talking about how much he and his ex-girlfriend fought when they drank. Alcohol had an “unleashing” effect, he said. They’d drink and all the little hurts and disappointments of the day would get
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