Let us pray 🛐
"Confidence is 10% hard work and 90% delusion."
—Tina Fey
> how to hug a man | why we drink
Alcohol was powerfully seductive to me from a young age.
It eased suffocating anxieties and insecurities that grew alongside my career as a journalist. 📝
I never married or had kids. Sometimes I darkly joked that alcohol was the only woman I could ever love.
I knew as the years passed by that my alcoholism was worsening. Austin and San Francisco are towns that make it feel perfectly normal to drink too much.
I proved it in both towns by drinking too much.
To finally get better, I had to grasp that Alcoholics Anonymous meetings on their own would never be enough.
- I needed to know more about why I binged on alcohol for days at a time.
I struggled with the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous. The so-called AA "Big Book" is filled with pseudo-science, pseudo-psychology, and painfully obvious observations.
Some lines just don't make sense. But we solemnly recite them at meetings as if they do.
I needed more before I could be comfortable with less. Educating myself about the science of addiction made it easier to lean into the squishiness and loose spirituality of AA.
Alcoholics Anonymous taught me how surprisingly pleasant and reassuring it can be to hold the hands of other drunks and pray together for another day without a drink. 🕊️
I even began memorizing prayers on my phone.
I never thought I'd be memorizing prayers on my phone.
- next time "I always stopped going after a few meetings."
- listening Le Tigre "Deceptacon"
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