What it means to survive
On addiction, witnessing, naming what would could have been, and saving ourselves
Today I’m sharing an essay of mine that was published a few months ago as a guest post at
’s dazzling, powerful, affirming Substack . If you don’t know Rebecca’s work, check out my interview with her. Our conversation was hugely popular when we first published it. I still get people contacting me about it.The essay below, however, is by me. It’s about addiction, empathy, and how we name what could have been. I’ve been thinking about this essay a lot lately—especially about why people can and cannot save themselves— after the death of Matthew Perry (whose memoir
wrote beautifully about recently). **I am not implying that Perry died from an overdose—rather, this essay is about how we project our own stories onto celebrities.When the essay below was first published in August, I was scrambling with pre-publication jitters and a little conflicted about sharing it, so I never sent it to all of you. But almost two months after publishing such a radically honest book, I’m tougher. Here are some reasons why.
This essay also feels timely for lots of reasons—the ideas of reconciling public and private forms of grief reach well beyond recovery—but please keep in mind this was written before the current global violence erupted. It’s heavy and personal, and while most of my midweek essays are free, this one is behind a paywall to keep the bad faith readers out.
what it means to survive
My mother has always made death her business. When celebrities die, my mother texts me as though she’s lost a dear friend. Sometimes she mentions loose connections she had to these figures, from the days she spent working as an agent in Hollywood. “Famous people die all the time,” I always say, brushing her off. When someone dies from an overdose, she’s even more taken by the news. Many years sober, my mother often does what a lot of people in recovery do: she talks of how close she once came to dying.
I don’t think my mother came close to dying, but it’s not really for me to say. Though I was there when things got hard, I was a girl, and I know there are things about her inner life I will never understand, and things I don’t ask about, because I don’t really want to know.
Recently, I let my mother read my book, which covers in part my own decision to quit drinking. “You could’ve died,” my mother said, and this unsettled me. I had never thought of my own drinking as taking me to the brink of death, even if I knew it had taken me to the edge of losing myself and becoming someone I did not want to be. Quietly and alone, I had wondered what would happen if I never stopped. I had visions of my liver turning yellow or crashing cars, but mostly after drinking I awoke in shame for what I couldn’t remember, not for memories I had of nearing death.
“You could’ve died,” my mother said, and I wasn’t sure whether she meant from the drinking or from the men I drank with.
For many women, the threat of death and men hang in close proximity in the mind. There’s a scene in my book my mother was referring to, in which I detail an encounter with a man who, it took me years to realize, attempted to rape me. Was she implying that he could have killed me, or that I could have killed myself when I was young, drinking so much?