We’ve all heard about it before: the warmth and exhilaration of alcohol, the sudden courage, and most of all, the thrill of being high on something. In contrast, we’ve become aware of the down sides: disease, blackouts, not being in control, and the hangovers. Now we hear from Sara Hepola, who’s experienced all of this. In her powerful memoir, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, she describes the life of an alcoholic trying to quit.

Since she was seven, Sarah had snuck sips of Pearl Light. Both her parents drank regularly and there was always beer in the house. As she grew older, alcohol became her companion through the harsh times. She lost friends/boyfriends due to her drunken behavior and alcoholic addiction. Yet, beer was the one the thing she couldn’t quit. Despite her many attempts, Sarah couldn’t last long without alcohol until reality hit her hard in the face and she realized she really had to change.

Although this may seem like a depressing topic to write about, Sarah lightens it up with her dark humor and wit. She uses strong descriptions that make you understand exactly what she went through. For example, “I’d spent years losing times, nights gone in a finger snap, but now I found myself with way too much time. I needed to catapult into a sunnier future, or I needed to sink back to a familiar past, but what I could not bear was the slow and aching present.” From these powerful lines, readers can understand and empathize with the author.

While Sarah is quite direct with her thoughts, she also uses colorful metaphors to paint a picture in the reader’s mind. For example,” So I curled up inside the closet, because it felt like being held.” Of course she is not physically trapped in a closet but she compares her life to a suffocating closet that she cannot escape. I can imagine her huddling in a dark corner desperately thinking about how she had ended up there. These metaphors let readers hop on the same roller coaster ride of emotions Sarah is struggling to survive.

Like most teenagers, I don’t usually read memoirs. The idea of sitting down and reading some long book about a person bores me. However, once I started Blackout, I couldn’t put it down. It is alarmingly honest and truly shows how you can plunge down into a black hole but with effort, pain, and sacrifice, you can slowly climb back up. This is one of those raw books where the author doesn’t hold back anything. It’s not easy telling people your whole life story especially if it’s a horrible one and filled with regret and suffering. However, Sarah shows that she is still moving on and slowly rebuilding herself.

Although we hopefully have never experienced all of this, this inspirational memoir hits not only home but straight to the heart. Personally, I’m not easily touched (yes, call me unemotional). Few books have done so but this memoir pierced right through with no mercy. It kept on pushing in until the very end where it left a mark. This new definition of memoir will change you. Drink it in but don’t choke.