Glamour magazine runs an annual essay contest, and the winning entry is always a compelling story. This year’s story, “I Drank and Drank, and Then One Day I Stopped,” by Adrienne Edenburn-MacQueen (pictured) reminded me very much of my own, which I told around the first of this year. I’ve never had much difficulty telling my story of getting sober cold-turkey, but I have rarely told the stories of the wretched, shameful things I did as a drunk. Every alcoholic has a mental list of shameful, drunken acts; every list may be different, but they’re all equally shameful. Edenburn-MacQueen writes about hers, shamefully but not specifically:

Among my circle of friends and coworkers, I became well-known as a hopeless drunk. Even on weeknights, when everyone else was only mildly intoxicated, I had to be carried out of the room. And I suffered the shame of being the worst drunk-girl stereotype. When a young man drinks himself into a stupor every night and then awakes oblivious the next day, he is considered, at worst, a douche bag. At best, he posts a photo on the Internet of himself passed out with a Sharpie mustache and is the life of the party and everyone’s best bud. When a young woman parties too hard, she’s a mental case.

Oh, I can relate. I can also relate, oh so painfully, to blackouts and remorse:

Blacking out occurred at some point every night. I would wake up every morning and do damage control. If I had properly removed my contacts, I reasoned, then I must have been OK. I’d look out the window, see my car and feel relief; never mind the fact that I didn’t remember driving it or parking it on the front lawn. Checking my bank account was next. The nights that I had used just my debit card were acceptable, but I knew that if I’d used an ATM, large amounts of cash in the middle of the night could have been for only one thing. It’s hard to look back now and realize how easily I could have been hurt or taken advantage of during a drug deal. I was never one to say no to anything, and the only thing that could stop me was the dreaded “insufficient funds.”

The last step was finding my phone. Some days it was fine, with no new contacts I couldn’t remember adding or text messages from people asking whether I was alive. Most days, however, ranged from mild embarrassment to panic as I would piece together events of the previous night. I’d find out from friends that I had started a brawl, called 911 looking for my purse, or gotten in a brutal fight with my boyfriend while singing karaoke because I decided halfway through the duet that I should get to sing both Sonny’s and Cher’s lines. I’d wake up surrounded by things I’d stolen, from street signs and traffic cones to framed pictures from whoever’s house I’d been to the evening before. And my growing shame would send me hunting for the cans of beer I knew my drunk self had hidden the night before for just this moment. Only when I was properly buzzed could I find any of it funny.

Both my and Edenburn-MacQueen’s drinking lives took place in our late teens and 20s; mine spanned ages 18 to 28, while hers from age 10 to 21, but her “daily abuse,” as she calls it, occurred the last four years before she quit. I envy someone who did not squander most of her 20s as a drunk.

The author hints at ways she has rationalized her drinking, but instead of spelling them out, she takes responsibility: “As easy as it would be to lay out my history, pointing to specific events as the reasons for my collapse, as though life were a giant game of Jenga, I won’t do it. Every drink — from my first, at age 10, to the start of my daily abuse at 17, to my last warm beer at 21 — was a choice.” Of course, mine were, too, but at the time, I voiced my favorite rationalization to people at parties: “Would it make any difference if I told you my father was an alcoholic?”

The fact that Edenburn-MacQueen’s story is so similar to my own is probably the least significant reason it is so compelling. It is well written. And if one young person sees himself or herself in it and quits abusive drinking, the author’s words will have done a world of good.

As I’ve mentioned several times before, alcoholics’ telling of their stories does remarkable things for both storyteller and listener.