The New Confessions

He got up and went across the room to his library, a long run of floor-to-ceiling bookcases, stopping in front of the section where he kept his wine books. There, in various stages of wear and tear, were Penning-Rowsell’s The Wines of Bordeaux, Lichine’s Encyclopedia of Wines and Spirits, Forest’s Monseigneur Le Vin, the current year’s Guide Hachet

Whiskey was a gift of the gods—dangerous, like fire and all gifts from heaven—to be used by the strong man with pleasure for joy, to solace and stimulate the imagination, to clothe reality in rosy light, evoke elusive happiness. I had misused it as a stupefying poison, to deaden consciousness—as an escape.

This is the vicious spiral that constitutes the psychological core of an addiction. You know you must stop, but you also can’t stop, because the very thing that’s hurting you – alcohol – has come to feel like the only means of controlling the negative emotions that, in fact, your drinking is helping to cause. Perhaps it seems melodramatic to compar

I remember being vaguely aware that I drank differently from the way other people did. I can’t remember ever turning down a drink, not even once; it would have been like a puppy turning down a proffered treat. Why not? Sure, I’ll have another. Drinking is fun. It feels good.