Erica C. Barnett - Quitter: A Memoir of Drinking, Relapse, and Recovery

I wake up slowly, like Im coming out of anesthesia. Somethings not right.

This isnt my bed. It isnt even my room. Im lying on the hardwood floor, just inside the door of my one-bedroom apartment. My bag is a few feet away, wallet, glasses, and makeup spilled across the room; my hot-pink felt jacket is twisted underneath me, and my keys are on the floor by my head.

I notice a red splotch of blood on the floor. What the hell? I sit up sharply, the room careening around me. Clutching the walls, I stagger to the bathroom, stumbling over a pair of boots discarded in the entryway. I rub the mascara out of my eyes and look at my reflection. Is that... a black eye? And why is my lower lip split down the middle?

As I peel off my clothes and crawl on top of the bare mattress, I piece the previous day together. At some point in the afternoon, I walked to the Busy Bee convenience store across the street from my apartment and picked up my usual liter of morning wine. (These slim cardboard bottles seem to have emerged in the late 2000s as a gift from the booze merchants to bus drinkers and other sneaky alcoholics; as innocent looking as a box of coconut water, and the perfect size for stashing in a purse.) I waved off the owners concern about my bandaged handan injury from an aborted hike in the Cascade Mountains a few days earlierand shuffled out into the sunlight as quickly as possible, pushing my huge tortoiseshell sunglasses back over my puffy eyes.

I had planned to walk to the train stop near my house and head downtown to pick up some of the stuff Id left behind a week earlier at the magazine where I used to work. Instead, I ended up sitting on a bench near the train tracks, drinking the cold, sour wine, and calling everyone I knewand many I barely knew at all. Yeah, I sniffled to the former mayor, things are pretty shitty right now. But maybe this is the wake-up call I needed, yknow? Struggling not to slur, I told an ex-boyfriend I hadnt contacted in years, Losing my job is definitely the worst thing that ever happened to me, but Im going to meetings, Im doing the things I need to do, and Im really trying to make the best of this. My friend Sandeep, who was kind enough never to mention the six thousand dollars I still owed him, was uncharacteristically quiet as I went on and on. What do you think I should do? Go back to rehab? Leave the state? I mean, do you think this might be the kick in the butt I need to get my shit together? Im sure he answered. I didnt listen.

Eventually, it started raining, and I was almost out of wine, so I got on the train. I sent a quick text to Emily, the office manager, to let her know I was on my way, then shut my eyes. My phone buzzed angrily in my hand. It was Emily, texting. You were supposed to be here an hour ago! You are on some seriously thin fucking ice with me, I thought.

Emily was supposed to be my friend. For a while, she and Melissa, one of the top bosses at the magazine, had taken me to AA meetings at lunchtime. In fact, Emily and Melissa were the ones who had driven me to detox a week earlierdropping me off, sobbing, at Fairfax, a lockdown mental hospital east of Seattle, in a leafy suburb that I had come to think of as the citys rehab annex. I thought they cared about my well-being. But as soon as I had gotten back to work, after a four-day detox that dried me out just enough to start to panic, I was told I no longer had a job.

Melissa had helped make that decision. And now, three days later, Emily was waiting for me to come and clear out my desk.

You knew, I fumed. You knew when you took me to Fairfax that they couldnt wait to get rid of me.

I took my time getting to my now former workplaceenough time to buy another bottle at a nearby convenience store and drink most of it, ducking into alleys on my way to the office. Some people carry around an internal map of all the places theyve had sex. I can map Seattle by its liquor storesthe basement-level Kress IGA Supermarket by the fancy concert hall where I saw the Monkees play a reunion show in 2013; the corner store and deli just up a flight of steps from my office, where a four-pack of Gallo commanded a steep $9.99; the liquor store on Second and Seneca, where I once pretended not to recognize a government spokesman I knew because I was so embarrassed to be there, buying a plastic bottle of $8.00 vodka from behind the counter.

By the time I called Emily to come and meet me, it was 5:30 and she was in no mood for small talk. Or maybe she smelled the wine on my breath and noticed that I couldnt walk a straight line from the elevators to the door. Okay, grab your stuff, she barked, standing sentry behind my desk. In my shame-clouded memory, she is tapping her foot impatiently, boring hateful holes in the back of my head.

Just then, I realized that Id forgotten to bring along anything to transport all my files and memorabilia, accumulated over fifteen years in reporting jobs from Texas to Seattle.

Where are you planning to put all that stuff? Up your ass, bitch. I dont know. I need to figure out whats important here. Five more minutes passed as I scrabbled through my papers with one eye closed, struggling to focus. Photo of me with former Texas governor Ann Richards? I definitely need that. File of documents about a long-dead monorail project, one of the first stories I covered in Seattle? Cant let that go.

Finally, Emily had had enough. Okay, you need to leave. If you want your stuff, we can mail it to you later. Indignantly, I grabbed my Rolodex and the Ann Richards photo and crammed them into my bike bag. Hours later, I would recall, with some embarrassment, the empty wine box I had shoved in the back of the file cabinet weeks earlier. Sulking, and somehow drunker than when I arrived, I followed Emily downstairs and stormed back out into the rain.

From here, my memories get patchy, like watching a film with half the scenes cut out. I walked back to the same store Id visited an hour earlier, going through a different checkout line with a fresh container of Chardonnay. I made it back to the train, swigging away like I was invisible, and managed to stay awake all the way to my stop. I savored this small victory as I disembarked, recalling all the times a bus driver had nudged me awake at the end of the line. I started walking, then running, home, as the rain came down harder. I tripped, catching myself for a split second on my injured hand.