Recalling the last weeks of my drinking when I had holed myself up in my apartment and drank until I passed out, then came to and drank some more, I took a deep breath. There wasn’t a scintilla of pleasure left when I poured another drink down my throat. After a certain point, I couldn’t even get drunk anymore. There was no thought, there was scarcely even a flicker of consciousness. I was no longer myself. I was a stranger sitting in his underwear in a dark apartment drinking himself to death.

“It’s like what you said. The loss of control. I didn’t want to drink, but I couldn’t stop myself, even when I knew I was dying.”

“But you did stop,” he reminded me. “Thirty-one days ago.”

I nodded. Yes, I had stopped drinking but—I stared at the muddy residue at the bottom of my coffee cup, looking for words to express the pervasive fear and anxiety that clouded my mind in my waking hours and seeped into my dreams; the unsettling feeling that I was fundamentally unfixable; defective.

Addressing the coffee cup, I said, “I feel like my entire existence is a mistake and when I feel that way, I really need a drink.”

“It’s just a feeling,” Larry replied, calmly. “If you don’t obsess it over it, it will pass.”

“What about the urge to drink?”

“Give it time. That will pass too.”

“But—”

“No buts,” he said firmly. “Here’s where you have to stop thinking and trust what other drunks like me are telling you about the process of getting and staying sober.”

“Thinking is what I do. It’s how I make—well, made—my living. You know, I’m a lawyer too. Criminal defense.”

“And I’m sure you’re a very capable one,” Larry said. “No doubt you have a brilliant mind you use to analyze complex legal issues and strategize defenses. But that fine brain of yours can be your enemy in this situation.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning, your mind turns your feelings into problems and tries to solve them the same way it solves legal issues, by analyzing them and considering all of their facets and possible outcomes. But feelings aren’t meant to be solved, they’re meant to be felt and released. Your real problem isn’t what you feel but that you don’t know how to feel.”

“Come on, everyone has feelings,” I said, resentfully.

“But when your feelings troubled you, you drowned them with booze. That’s not an option anymore. So, when a painful emotion or memory comes up, you’re going to have to learn to sit with it until it passes or talk it out with someone who’s dealt with the same feeling and gotten through it sober. That’s what the fellowship is all about. One drunk talking to another. Do you have a sponsor?”

I shook my head. “No, not yet.”