And it’s this last little bit that is maybe the hardest. You have to start believing that things can change. The thing that kills alcoholics isn’t the drinking, it’s the loss of hope. The years of my drinking were not halcyon years, they were dark and desperate and the drinking was an effort to conceal a growing conviction that I was irrevocably lost, like a ship crushed by the ice in Antarctica lost. When you lose hope, well, trying doesn’t seem to make much sense anymore.