Sarah Hepola’s Blackout (post 2): Quotations of passages mentioning that the author heard voices—neither psychotic nor alcoholic—as do many writers

As seen in the quotations below, Ms. Hepola heard voices, which were neither psychotic nor alcoholic. They were not psychotic, because, no matter how real they seemed to her, she nevertheless had intact reality-testing, which is psychiatric jargon meaning that she knew the voices were subjective. The voices were not caused by the alcohol, but were the voices commonly heard by many writers: search “voice” for my May 4, 2014 post on the writer’s voices.

“I think I knew I was in trouble. The small, still voice inside me always knew” (1, p. 11).

“…the pendulum could swing inside my brain all night: I will, no I won’t; I should, no I can’t. I drank to drown those voices…” (1, p. 22).

“The wine turned down the volume on my own self-doubt, which is what a blocked writer is battling: the bullying voices in her head…my inner critic…Sometimes…I would drink myself blind…I’d find myself reading over the words later and thinking: Wow, this is pretty good. I didn’t even know I thought that…They had the last-call honesty of someone pulling the listener close. We only have a few more minutes. Let me tell you everything” (1, pp. 86-87).

“I woke up at 5 am each day, chest hammering with anxiety, and crawled into the closet for a few hours to shut out unpleasant voices…I liked how the voices in my mind stopped chattering the moment the doorknob clicked” (1, p. 134-136).

Recalling an experience when she was 14: “I’d had three wine coolers before we went into the room, not enough to black out but enough to have a warm buzz…I remember lying on the floor…and the voice screaming in my brain: Am I having sex right now?” (1, p. 201).

“Alcohol…silenced my inner critic…I even loved writing hungover, when I was too exhausted to argue with myself…(1, p. 205).

Readers who do not have multiple personality, and who don’t know that many writers do, mistakenly think that such references to hearing voices are metaphors. But they are not metaphors. They describe the writer’s subjective experience of autonomous characters, narrators, alter egos, voice, inner critic, shadow, alternate personalities; call them what you will.

1. Sarah Hepola. Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2015.