"He cannot picture life without alcohol. Some day he will be unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it. Then he will know loneliness such as few do. He will be at the jumping off place. He will wish for the end."
This passage probably sounds hyperbolic to people without a drinking problem but there are few passages in The Book that resonate more deeply with me. The very last time I drank I could not get drunk and I was not able to sink into oblivion. I was aware of the desperation of my drunken condition with absolutely no sense of release or relief. It was the first time that this had ever happened that I can recall. The release from the sense of doom that hung over my head was getting shorter and shorter as I neared the end of my drinking but I always got at least a momentary release. This time . . . no. It did not come. I was so drunk I was incapacitated. I couldn't walk or talk coherently but this time I didn't get to the place where I didn't give a shit that this was the case. I was as miserable with the alcohol in me as I was stone cold sober.
Those of us who grew up with televisions that relied on cathode ray technology will remember what happened when the power was switched off: the picture collapsed toward the center from the periphery until there was just a tiny spot of light at the center of the screen . . . then it would blink off. Total darkness. That's what it felt like at the end for me.
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