No recovering alcoholic ever seems to want to talk about what it was like being an alcoholic.

I could have died

No recovering alcoholic ever seems to want to talk about what it was like being an alcoholic. They'll just tell you why they started — abusive family, boredom, poverty, peer pressure, pick your poison — or tell you why they stopped, and what happened after that. Like the anti-fairy tale, no one talks about what happened when we were Sadly Ever Before. Here's why: a lot of shameful things happen, and I don't remember most of them. Insert here an ellipsis, an etcetera, an awkward pause. What I do remember is screaming a lot. Screaming at my girlfriend, screaming at my dad, the television, ex-friends, at a critic on the internet for getting my favourite band all wrong, at my dog. I remember driving drunk and being proud of it, of knowing what time the neighbourhood theka shut down and what time our other supplier shut down (never). I had sex with a girl from college without protection. I smashed my Mac computer, I cried and thought I saw my dead aunt, but it wasn't my dead aunt, it was a tree outside the window, I lost my girlfriend and I stopped reading. I could have died, but I didn't. I don't know why — I am no better than any other drunkard on the road. I am not morally, physically, intellectually or emotionally better than them. Though that's a delusion I, and all other alcoholics, cling to — that we are better than you, we are special, not special in the ordinary, good-at-one-thing way, but special in a way that even other alcoholics aren't. But like snowflakes, or butterflies, or anything in life, if you look at things from a distance, they're all the same. And that is another thing alcoholics can't do — have any perspective. I just got tired of drinking. It's a lot of work, being drunk all the time, and your threshold keeps climbing till you have to consume more and more alcohol to get the same buzz. I was slowly but surely running out of money to spend, and after that I ran out of friends willing to lend me money. I could never get anything else done — and if I really was as special as I believed, I had to do more to prove it to others. I lacked the commitment to die an alcoholic. Don't get me wrong: I don't look down on alcoholics. If you start looking, you'll find a hundred reasons to get drunk. It's sad for other people to watch you get drunk. But there's a happiness we drunks get from it and I won't lie about it. There are moments of clarity and beauty that justify every bit of alienation from your loved ones.