Blackout: Remembering The Things I Drank To Forget

Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget is a personal memoir by Sarah Hepola. The author opens the book with a monumental scene in her life that really sticks out to her and her journey of alcohol dependency and self- discovery. She just briefly touches on the subject but then transports the reader back to the beginning of her life. She explains her childhood, her upbringing, and what she suspects to be the beginning of her addiction to alcohol. She grew up in a small town in Dallas, Texas where, by the age of seven she started sneaking sips of beer her parents would leave opened in the refrigerator. The real heavy drinking and blackouts did not begin until she was in college. She left Dallas for The University of Texas at Austin. She never suspected her self to be a young alcoholic in college because, “Everyone has blackouts, don’t they?” (43).
After college she worked for many small newspapers and even became a music critic for The Dallas Observer. Through out her 20’s she prided herself in being able to “drink with the guys”. She could keep up with them, take their jokes, and was even able to throw jokes right back. She started to not care for her personal appearance; letting herself gain weight and constantly smelling like a pack of Marlboro cigarettes. Not only did she pride herself in being able to hang with the guys but also in the …show more content…
Her drunken behavior started to be less comical and more of an embarrassment to her friends and her self. She drank herself into an oblivion where she would either just not care about her drunken stumbles and mistakes or forget them completely while being blacked out. The event in the beginning of the book finds its way into her story when she describes a business trip she takes to Paris. This event was a big part in her self realization that she may have a problem with drinking. Yet she drinks on the plane ride home, and then for another five