The subject of growing up and reaching adulthood is so sickeningly over-sentimentalized that I can barely think about it, let alone write about it. This is true even though the idea of growing up could fit in with a lot of things I talk about here.

I�m reading �Drinking: A Love Story,� by Caroline Knapp. I avoided this book for a long time, figuring it held a bunch of unwelcome truths, which it does. Take this:

�In a word, alcohol is what kept me from growing up�. That seems like such an obvious insight, so simple it borders on the banal, but until that moment I�d never really grasped the idea the growth was something you could choose, that adulthood might be less a chronological state than an emotional one which you decide, through painful acts, to both enter and maintain�. When you quit drinking you stop waiting. You begin to let go of the wish, age old and profound and essentially human, that someone will swoop down and do all the hard work, growing up, for you.�

I want to repeat one part in particular. �When you quit drinking you stop waiting.�

When this book was published in 1996, it got a lot of press. I remember reading the interviews and trying to suppress my interest and excitement about the book, written by a young woman with a background similar to mine. I convinced myself that the book was probably just a lot of AA drivel and whining about victimhood.

Shortly after I quit drinking, I was reading a magazine and came across the author�s obituary. She died of cancer at 42, about five years after publishing the book and not ten years after quitting drinking. My response at the time was anger. What the fuck! She quit drinking and she died anyway! I remember saying to my sister, �If I knew I was going to die at 42, I�d sure as hell still be drinking.�

I bring this up because I no longer feel that way. I see it differently now. If I died tomorrow, everything I�ve done would still be worthwhile.

Towards the end of the time I was drinking, I fantasized about being confined to a hospital and thus relieved of all responsibility for making decisions about my life. I�m saying institutionalization appealed to me so much I put myself to sleep at night dreaming about it. I wanted to wait forever. I don't want that anymore.

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