我超愛我的寶貝女兒,但卻偏偏離不開酒

I soon learned as a married, stay-at-home mother that if I remained drunk about 40 percent of my waking hours, I really enjoyed it. That is not true. I did not calculate percentages. Also, I did not particularly enjoy it.

作爲一位已婚的全職媽媽，我很快了解到：如果我40%醒着的時間都是喝醉的狀態，那我會十分享受。但這是錯的。我沒有計算比例，也沒有那麼享受。

I would go to the store to "buy groceries for a nice dinner" and come back with a couple nice bottles of wine, for our nice dinner, which I would drink while I cooked. At our actual dinner I would have more wine and a cocktail or two. (They do not write this in the "new mom" brochure we get when they discharge us from the hospital, but perhaps they should.)

我會去商店"買一些食材準備美味的晚餐"，回來的時候會帶幾瓶酒搭配美味的晚餐，但我在做菜的時候就會開喝。實際吃飯的時候，我會喝更多酒，還會再喝一兩杯雞尾酒。（出院時，他們沒有在發給我們的"初爲人母"的手冊中寫下這一點，但也許他們應該加上這一條。）

I drank for relief. I drank because from my first sip at sixteen, alcohol felt like peace, like coming home after a long and arduous journey. Anticipation of the day's first glass was a rush of lifted spirits within me-energy, comfort, being-and by glass number two, I began to feel the way I thought I should feel all the time.

我喝酒是爲了放鬆。因爲從16歲喝到的第一口酒開始，它就給我帶來了平靜，好比一段漫長而艱辛的旅程之後，我回到了家中。每天對第一杯酒的期待令我精神滿滿--能量、舒適、活於人間--到了第二杯，我開始覺得自己活成了自以爲的那個樣子。

Drugs would do the same, but they required such commitment- transactions with people I didn't know, dealers refusing to return my calls. After Ava was born, I was a drug dabbler. I was a fucking grown-up, after all, a mother.

毒品會帶來同樣的情況，但需要做出一定承諾--與陌生人做交易、販毒者拒絕回我電話。艾娃出生後，我曾涉獵過毒品。但畢竟我是一個成年人，一位母親。

More realistically, what saved me from narcotics was that I lived on a ranch ten miles outside an excessively vanilla college town where "partying" looked like nineteen-year-olds doing keg stands, not bumps of cocaine in bathroom stalls.

將我從毒品中拯救出來的更爲現實的原因是：我住在一個牧場上，距離超大的香草大學城十英里，在那裏"派對"就是19歲的大學生喝桶裝啤酒，而不是在浴室裏吸可卡因。

And I wasn't seeking drugs because I had alcohol, which was enough-mostly because it was reliable. You could get a bad baggie. You couldn't get a bad handle of Grey Goose. Plus, everyone drank. I could cling to alcohol like it was my last breath of air, but as long as I hid my desperation, the world would assume I was motherly, even sophisticated. They would believe the polish of laughter and smiles, as long as I never looked too excited.

我不再吸毒還有一個原因：我還有酒啊，這就足夠了--主要因爲酒能令我安心。你可能會買到壞的手提包。但你卻不會買到壞的灰雁牌伏特加酒。另外，每個人都會喝醉。我堅持飲酒，就像它是最後一縷空氣，但只要我隱瞞我的絕望，整個世界就會以爲我是一位好母親，甚至還會認爲我經驗豐富。他們會相信我的假笑，只要我看上去不至於太過興奮。