Donal O'Callaghan

“Of course, active alcoholics love hearing about the worst cases; we cling to stories about them. Those are the true alcoholics: the unstable and the lunatic; the bum in the subway drinking from the bottle; the red-faced salesman slugging it down in a cheap hotel. Those alcoholics are always a good ten or twenty steps farther down the line than we are, and no matter how many private pangs of worry we harbor about our own drinking, they always serve to remind us that we’re okay, safe, in sufficient control. Growing up, whatever vague definition of alcoholism I had centered around the crazy ones—Eliza’s mother, Lauren’s father’s ex-wife, the occasional drunken parent of a friend. Alcoholics like that make you feel so much better: you can look at them and think, But my family wasn’t crazy; I’m not like that; I must be safe. When you’re drinking, the dividing line between you and real trouble always manages to fall just past where you stand.”
― Caroline Knapp, Drinking: A Love Story

“At heart alcoholism feels like the accumulation of dozens of such connections, dozens of tiny fears and hungers and rages, dozens of experiences and memories that collect in the bottom of your soul, coalescing over many many many drinks into a single liquid solution.”
― Caroline Knapp, Drinking: A Love Story

“Be the one to stand out in the crowd,
Be the one to go where they’d rather not.
Beautiful things don’t beg for a chance to glow
They throw out their lights and just shine out loud!”
― Chinonye J. Chidolue

“There’s something about sober living and sober thinking, about facing long afternoons without the numbing distraction of anesthesia, that disabuses you of the belief in externals, shows you that strength and hope come not from circumstances or the acquisition of things but from the simple accumulation of active experience, from gritting the teeth and checking the items off the list, one by one, even though it’s painful and you’re afraid. When you drink, you can’t do that. You can’t make the distinction between getting through painful feelings and getting away from them. All you can do is just sit there, numb and sipping, numb and drunk.”
― Caroline Knapp, Drinking: A Love Story