stock photo of a man for the story 'Drowning Pool'

Drowning Pool

An editor's journey with alcoholism

Paul Sullivan

I think I realized I was an alcoholic as I was trying to convince myself I wasn't one.

I was a young man and quite fancied myself as a smart man. I had showed some promise through school, a promise never quite realized, but it was enough to convince me of my own genius.

Beneath the thin ice of my self-confidence, there was a deep, dark pool of frigid water, a drowning pool of fear, self-loathing and insecurity, and like all plumbing problems, the longer I ignored it, the more flooded my basement became.

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