Alcoholics have notoriously selective memories. No matter how sickening the hangover, how humiliating the drunken behavior, how dangerous the blind-drunk drive home, we seem incapable of recalling consistently or clearly how bad things got when we drank. Drinkers talk about losing the power of choice over alcohol: At certain times, when the need or desire to drink becomes too strong, those memories simply evaporate. Willpower vanishes, resolutions dissolve, defenses crumble.
