In my life I can recall (or not recall) two times I blacked out from drinking. One lead to vague consent issues and the other lead to me arriving at home- 20 miles away from where I started- with no recollection of my drive home… when I was the driver. (Hi mom!) Sarah Hepola spent 25 years having similar, and worse, experiences to mine.
A person suffering from a black out may appear fine. The hippocampus is shut down but short term memory still works, therefore you could carry on a conversation and get from Point A to Point B with little trouble but the brain doesn’t retain the memory. A friend may notice you’re a bit dead eye or repeating yourself but you can pass. Ask the right questions that aren’t questions the next morning to fill in blanks and you can pass. And Sarah passed for a long time.
This book should be handed out at college orientations; Blackout chronicles Hepola’s life as a heavy drinker and the ramifications of her choices. She began stealing sips of beer from her parents’ open cans when she was in elementary school and began drinking excessively ad a teenager. Her career as a writer seemed to give her an excuse for her drinking, often going over stories with coworkers in bars, and she felt alcohol fueled her creativity.
“alcohol was an escalating madness, and the blackout issue was the juncture separating two kinds of drinking. One kind was a comet in your veins. The other kind left you sunken and cratered, drained of all light.”
I listened to the audiobook, a medium I’m beginning to enjoy for memoirs, and at times it was hard to listen as Sarah recounted her journey. She recounts humiliating experiences, often sharing the difference between how she felt at the time and how her friends saw the antics. Her close friends (Anna and Stephanie) occasionally drifted out of her life because of her drinking. They’d come back into her life and give her (several) second chances only to be disappointed again. Her alcoholism made her selfish and difficult to live with, her romantic relationships faltered but she couldn’t part ways with the bottle for over two decades.
“Alcoholism is a self-diagnosis. Science offers no biopsy, no home kit to purchase at CVS. Doctors and friends can offer opinions, and you can take a hundred online quizzes. But alcoholism is something you must know in your gut.”
Her recovery story, about 4 years of sobriety at the time of publication, isn’t pretty but she’s honest with the reader about her dark moments. At times her words feel like poetry- an ode to beer and bourbon or a love story about liquor. Mostly it’s just heartbreaking.
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