ABSTRACT
I stood outside the Monongahela building, pacing back and forth before stepping across the threshold to hit the 8 button on an elevator that would take me to my therapists’ floor. I didn’t know what was happening to me. Six months sober, not a drop, and I had had a blackout. A blackout! No memory of the past 2 days and a slew of receipts for clothes that didn’t resemble anything close to what I considered “my style” hanging neatly in the bedroom closet. I searched all the usual hiding places: atop the quilt basket collecting dust in the attic, beneath a row of carefully stacked toilet paper in the hall closet, all the dark corners of the basement, and my favorite, the space in the trunk where my spare tire was supposed to fit snugly. But they all came up empty. There were no “empties,” no evidence of a binge in sight, no hangover even, yet something was missing. I was missing: for 2 whole days.
