Sarah Hepola’s “Blackout: Remembering The Things I Drank To Forget” is less like a stroll down memory lane and more like a bumpy ride through a colorful life punctuated with potholes (not plot holes, mind). Hepola shares a spectrum of stories in her award-winning memoir, some familiar to your everyday drinker—think college parties and boozy dinners. Some, though, might not be so familiar—think stealing beer as a pre-teen to drink alone or waking up in a Parisian hotel with just hours before a flight and no passport.
Blackout drinking is not reserved for the alcoholic. Plenty of us have experienced a blackout after a few too many drinks and a few too… few calories. But Hepola brings us in close with this candid confessional, telling us what it’s like when blacking out is par for the course, but you don’t want to stop drinking. She takes us along for the highs of communal intoxication and the lows of solitary, hopeless hangovers. The memoir drips with something that we sober folk can’t get enough of – brutal honesty. That said, if you’re not ready to interrogate your own suspect situations and past involving drink, this might not be for you yet. This book takes us through some painful moments in Hepola’s past that likely wouldn’t have happened were it not for alcohol, with the question of consent playing a small but powerful part in the book.
From taking risks with her career to rocky relationships to moments of real and gut-wrenching despair, we get to see the author’s rocky journey with alcohol. That includes a long stretch of time during which she knew things weren’t okay, but she didn’t have the resources to fix it. That’s not to say she couldn’t afford rehab—we’re not talking about financial resources. The kind of resources we see Hepola lack and then gain were of a different ilk: namely community, spirituality, and emotional stability—those precious resources that are ultimately priceless.
Any book recounting a journey with addiction runs the risk of either glazing over the gory details or wallowing for too long in the mire of misery and dejection. Hepola balances the two delicately, offering neither an overly sanitized morality tale nor a glorification of the debauched depths of drink. It’s raw, yes, and unflinchingly so, which is precisely why it’s so bloody brilliant. She manages to narrate and analyze her history with a wit that doesn’t undermine the severity of her experiences but makes them palpable, even relatable.
“I finally understood alcohol was not a cure for pain; it was merely a postponement.”
Sarah Hepola
The line that I left with that I related to so deeply in that it was the reason I quit drinking too, reads: “I finally understood alcohol was not a cure for pain; it was merely a postponement.” Ouch. In this single sentence, Hepola sums up the difficult reality that the solution to so many suffering peoples’ problems is nothing of the sort—alcohol isn’t solving your problem; it’s delaying it and adding a hangover to it, too.
There’s so much more to this book that I could stuff into a longer, more detailed review, but the story speaks for itself. From her experience with AA to the value of friendships to all the things she learned and tried out in her sobriety, this book shows you what’s waiting at the end of a painful battle with alcohol. It’s an honest and searching personal account that feels like reading a gripping fictional tale. I highly recommend you read it if you’re in the mood for some QUITLIT laced with drama, revelations, and inspiration. This is not just a story for those who have stumbled along similar paths but for anyone who appreciates the brutal beauty of an honest, well-told life story.
The Sobees #QUITLIT Score: 5 out of 5
Sober Curator Pro Tip: Real Sarah Hepola fans know all about her: Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em Podcast | Substack
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