I felt exactly like Michael Keaton in Clean and Sober, anxious and restless and disoriented, as though I was trying to adjust to an amputation. Which, of course, I was. You take away the drink and you take away the single most important method of coping you have. How to talk to people without a drink. How to sit on the sofa and watch TV and not crawl right out of your own skin. How to experience a real emotion—pain or anxiety or sadness—without an escape route, a quick way to anesthetize it. How to sleep at night.
