“What is my peak state?  If my peak state is without alcohol, then of course I should abstain from that altogether.”

—Rebecca Shern

After years of striving to “not be so hard on myself”, I am now enjoying the freeing, empowering effect of keeping personal rules that I never negotiate with other people, or even with my own bad moods. Clear rules reduce the need for approval, the stress of trying to have everything both ways, and the necessity of constantly explaining yourself. Since I began to recognize the freeing effect of personal rules, I’ve never felt more independent, and I’ve never worried so little about what others think.

Instead of going by mood or whim, you already know what you will do and what you won’t. You know which side of the fence you want to live on—on this side lies prosperity, consistency, and health, and on that side lies remorse, ambivalence and excuse-making, and other varieties of pain you’ve finally decided to be done with.

And you’re still free. You can always hop the fence and get burned again, which will only remind you why drew a line in the first place.

Wise People Have Rules For Themselves
David Cain

“Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you’re allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It’s like killing yourself, and then you’re reborn. I guess I’ve lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.”

—Charles Bukowski

Drinking blurred my edges and made me feel physically part of the world, entwined with everything around me: his body, the salt air, the rush and hiss of the water. This was the opposite of what I’d felt most of my life, that fervent desire to disappear from whatever moment I’d found myself inhabiting, so that I could fast-forward to another moment in the future, once my real life had begun.

—Leslie Jamison, Running and Drinking Were The Two Quickest Ways to Escape

“Sobriety is an absence that makes room for so much plenitude.”

—Leslie Jamison

Reading the novel illuminated my own deep ambivalence about booze: how much relief I felt at stopping, how thirsty I still felt.

—Leslie Jamison, The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath

A writer’s journey has never been easy, but some roads, it seems, are more treacherous than others. These days, you’re more likely to hear about nurturing self-care practices to support creativity—like yoga or meditation—than a writer’s favorite cocktail (unless, of course, it’s made with kale juice). Are writer’s drinking less? It’s hard to say. Perhaps they’re just using different libations to arrive at the same destination. After all, Charles Baudelaire didn’t think your spirit of choice mattered. “One should always be drunk,” he wrote. “But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.”

—E.B. White

“A household slave runs away from the master that beats him.  But you remain with the wine that beats your head each day.”

—St. Basil the Great, On Fasting and Feasts: St. Basil the Great, Homily Against Drunkards