“The self is a slippery beast,” my colleague Peter wrote last year, in his praise for Sarah Miller’s ayahuasca travelogue. In her latest, the beast isn’t merely slippery—it’s lubricated. Miller, a longtime drinker, recounts her roundabout path to unexpected sobriety with characteristic humor and enviable precision.
My drunken bonding with the editor didn’t feel fake, as some alcohol-induced connection does, but it would have been very difficult to arrange without the excuse of drinking. Imagine asking a person you barely know to have a long, intimate conversation with you. In the Big Book, there’s a phrase that begins, “with all the earnestness at our command.” Before giving up drinking, I had very little earnestness at my command. I drank in order to give myself permission to talk openly, or at great length, or to heighten the sensation of listening or being listened to. Drinking is way easier than saying that you want to talk to someone, or don’t. I learned this in my childhood home, where my parents would be downstairs at the same time for hours, absolutely silent. At six o’clock, I would hear the ice cubes, and at 6:02, the talking.
To drink, or not to drink? More pics about shifting relationships with alcohol
