Drinking: A Love Story

Knapp shares some examples that show how dysfunctional her drinking became. She says that drinking became a response to nearly every situation and emotion: “I drank when I was happy and I drank when I was anxious and I drank when I was bored and I drank when I was depressed, which was often” (1-2). Knapp also explains how drinking became linked to need, not simple enjoyment.

For instance, though she learned to appreciate the subtle nuances of different red wines, these nuances never mattered much because she was drinking for another reason: to get drunk. Being drunk drowned out the parts of her life that hurt and troubled her, and it grew to become a key part of her identity. As Knapp puts it, “you wake up one morning and some indefinable tide has turned forever and you can’t go back. You need it” (6). Knapp describes this need as “crippling” and compares it to the “passion, sensual pleasure, deep pulls, lust, fears, and yearning hungers” of a love affair (5). She’s enamored with how alcohol makes her feel, especially its ability to shift her focus from one thing to another. Alcohol gives her courage and comfort, and she can’t imagine living without it.

Knapp reveals how she kept a “show bottle” of what she was supposedly drinking and a “real bottle” of what she was actually drinking, and how the liquor in the latter disappeared much quicker than the liquor in the former (1). The show bottle was to keep up appearances, something that felt essential. Being open and honest never seemed like an option. Keeping up appearances is especially important around her mother. One day, during a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, Knapp slips up. Her mother notices how drunk she is and tells her that she is worried about Knapp’s alcohol use. She says it could damage Knapp’s mind and her future. Knapp recalls the “dread and contrition” she felt during this conversation, and how she didn’t want her mother to be angry with her (3). She wants to keep her promise, but ultimately she can’t. Nine months later, Knapp’s mother discovers one of Knapp’s liquor stashes. Instead of coming clean, Knapp tells her mother that the stash is from before she made the promise. This all happens during her father’s funeral, after his long battle with a brain tumor. Knapp is 33 at the time, and she is already showing physical symptoms of excessive drinking, from a tremor in her hands to broken blood vessels in her face.

Soon after the funeral, Knapp takes a test that challenges her to have no more than three drinks a day for six months. She tries to do this but cannot. “Alcohol had become too important,” she explains, “[b]y the end it was the single most important relationship in my life” (5).

Knapp illustrates the ways she would minimize and rationalize her choices involving alcohol. For instance, she would tell herself that the two glasses of wine she had with dinner were small, so they were actually just one glass. Even when Knapp has some awareness that she has a drinking problem, she rationalizes. She spends time with Elaine, a neighbor who gets sloppy drunk and cries over being embroiled in an affair with a married man. Knapp tells herself that since she’s not this messy and desperate, she must be okay. Elaine’s messiness is a characteristic of what Knapp considers a stereotypical alcoholic. Knapp sees herself as both different and superior. She notes that she has “the CV of a model citizen or a gifted child, not a common drunk” (7). She was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Harvard is located. She graduated magna cum laude from Brown. Her father is a respected psychoanalyst, and her mother is a talented artist. Both are smart, thoughtful, and devoted parents. But Knapp’s upbringing also surrounded her with alcohol. By the time she graduated college, “drinking seemed as natural as breathing, an ordinary part of social convention, a simple prop” (7).