Drinking: A Love Story

Knapp considers some of the associations alcohol gained in her mind as she consumed media and entertainment. She says pop culture told her that alcohol is linked to friendship, machismo, and sophistication, and that drinking is normal, a way to bring you out of your shell: “The idea that alcohol might play a more complicated internal role, that it might function on a much deeper emotional plane, was lost on me” (64). Knapp also dwells on a line from a book about alcoholism by Nan Robertson, a New York Times journalist: “When Nan gets bombed, she goes off into some little room in her mind, and pulls down the shade” (64). Knapp finds this line interesting because it is so different from most other descriptions of alcoholics; it flies in the face of conventional wisdom and stereotypes. It’s about the places alcohol can take people and the way it helps them shed parts of themselves that weigh them down. Knapp says an alcoholic often drinks because they want to assume a different personality: the personality of someone they like. For Knapp, this is a “nonintellectual, nonanalytic” version of herself that is rebellious, appealingly cynical, and fun. She argues that alcohol “melts down the pieces of us that hurt or feel distress; it makes room for some other self to emerge, a version that’s new and improved and decidedly less conflicted” (65).