drinking: a love story?

[peacenik]

drinking: a love story?

5thaday;506352 wrote: Indeed. I always thought it might be nice for a recovering boozehound who didn't have any other serious life problems to write an autobiography of how they gave up drinking. When you think about it, there are so many so-called 'functional alcoholics' out there (I count myself among them), who haven't had a bad life, haven't destroyed their careers by drinking, etc, yet recognize that their drinking very well might send them to an early grave. Maybe that should be my project for the new year!

i'd read it for sure!

[Marshy]

drinking: a love story?

starfairy;504303 wrote: has anyone read drinking: a love story? I found that book to be very inspirational.

I hope I get to the inspirational bit soon, it's killing me! I'm finding it very uncomfortable so far because I relate to so much of it. I'm reading it in quick bursts, then giving it a rest for a week while I read something lighter. Just forced myself to read a chapter while in the bath. Here's an extract:

"Alcohol offers protection from the pain of self-discovery, a wonderful, cocooning protection that's enormously insidious because it's utterly false but it feels so real.

"And then, tragically, the protection stops working. The mathematics of transformation change. This is inevitable. You drink long and hard enough and your life gets messy. Your relationships become strained. Your work suffers. You run into financial trouble, or legal trouble, or trouble with the police. Rack up enough pain and the old math - Discomfort + Drink = No Discomfort - ceases to suffice; feeling "comfortable" isn't good enough any more. You're after something deeper than a respite from shyness, or a break from private fears and anger. So after a while you alter the equation, make it stronger and more complete. Pain + Drink = Self-Obliteration."

Ouch.