Field notes of an American alcoholic in rehab

Most books and essays about alcoholism and recovery are triumphant tales of success meant to inspire those still suffering under its baffling compulsions. It's a kind of sincere testimony that promises you can do this. This isn’t that.

It's such a small choice. It's just a little liquid in a glass. The most normal thing in the world as it has been since long before the Romans.  I knew it was a bad idea. I also knew I had already made up my mind. In a very real way, making the decision to drink is the same as having a drink. There will always be triggers. Life’s landmines proliferate under the solid ground of sobriety as quickly and suddenly as they do beneath the quicksand of mind-numbing inebriation. 

I can’t promise that anyone will be all right because I don’t know if I’ll be all right. Rather, this is a dispatch from the trenches of treatment. As honest an accounting as I know how to give of what rehab is really like.