I have been known to avoid alcohol during visits with my in-laws, not because I’m afraid of what I’ll say (or what they’ll say, for that matter) – I just find it to be a lavish waste of a delightful vice. I am terrified of flying, but never drink on flights because I want to be sober and clear-minded during the last seconds of my life if we go down. I went out with friends in Brooklyn the night after 9/11 in an attempt to drown our fears and trauma, but was unable to embrace getting a buzz, so resolutely do I associate the feeling of being tipsy or drunk with the feeling of joy.

Over the years, especially in my alcohol-soaked 20s, I have quietly speculated about my often over-indulgent drinking habits, wondering if I could be an alcoholic. The statistically steady rise in women and alcohol abuse came as no surprise to me, as someone who came into my 30s in journalism in much the manner as author Sarah Hepola, whose undimmed, well-written drinking memoir Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget was released this month. Hepola’s story of a young journalist in her 20s and then 30s ascending the male-dominated ranks of her profession, drinking with the best of them primarily to fend off insecurity and self-doubt, ends with her realization that she is an alcoholic – whereupon she finds the strength to get sober in time to recognize, mercifully, all the beauty in the world.

It is a familiar narrative, some of which resonated for me: there were strange beds I woke up in back then, and conversations that disappeared into the dark menace of blackout. But I have never looked to drinking so that I might “get through” things easier; I drink because I truly relish it. It just took me until my 30s to learn when to cut myself off before it stopped being enjoyable.

The first time I got drunk – like a lot of people – was in high school. I was a sophomore girl with a chip on her shoulder, the only black person in my class. After four beers, that chip turned into a glacier and I felt beyond grand and self-righteous. But that night, as I laid in the twin bed next to my friend and tried desperately to focus on one single spot on the ceiling, the room spun and I was done.

I briefly changed my mind when I started college and dabbled in more beer, various flavored liquors and deathly sweet cocktail mixtures. Once, invited to be a guy’s date at this really big deal fraternity formal, I started drinking with everyone poolside in the late afternoon; after a couple red plastic cups of Hawaiian punch mixed with liquor, I passed out in the hotel bed and slept through until midnight. Later on, I had a serious boyfriend with a serious drinking problem: his drunkenness pretty much turned me off to alcohol again. It had begun to feel as though I would either drink too much or drink nothing at all.

In my early 20s, the man of my dreams (or so I thought) – a black restaurateur named Steve with a micro-Basquiat afro and impeccable style – introduced me to good food, better wine and unrelenting heartbreak. We would go out to dinner and drink delicious wine and eat gorgeous food and my world turned sepia. It was like living inside the inky romance of a 35 millimeter film strip. He broke my heart; I held onto the wine.

Then, the decade after I moved to New York was personally and professionally fraught, and involved a significant amount of drinking. One year I was hired by a Hollywood studio to adapt my birthmother’s memoir into a feature-length screenplay. That was the period during which I introduced myself to scotch and whiskey. Fail. Another time, I decided that I liked the idea of martinis; they did not like the idea of me.

For a while, I thought I was maybe an alcoholic – or at the very least a troubled drinker by proxy. And I went with it. I became (briefly) engaged to a performance artist – a recovering alcoholic who was almost giddy at the notion of ushering me into sobriety. I visited the rooms with him a couple of times and, like many alcoholics in denial (which I thought I also might be), judged the entire room and everyone in it.

I quit sobriety like I quit drinking: abruptly, though I never returned to my heavy imbibing days. But then in my early 30s, I got married and had my son. After he was born, and when I was breastfeeding, I knew I could only have one or two glasses of wine if I was going to drink at all, so it had better be good. I researched tannins, minerality, region, acidic content and, above all, taste. In the years since, wine has been my mainstay and has become an integral part of my evenings – while I prep dinner and listen to music (usually Nina Simone or early Stevie Wonder), I have the kitchen (and my wine) to myself as my son plays after-homework video games and my husband reads in the bedroom.

A few weeks ago, I developed a mysterious stomach ailment; my doctor ordered blood work and an ultrasound of my abdomen, both of which came back normal. Without giving me an endoscopy, she couldn’t give me a formal diagnosis – but what she could do, and did, was tell me to cut many things out of my diet, including alcohol, for two weeks.

It has been a very long time since I have gone longer than a few days without drinking wine, and I miss it but I don’t long for it. Will I be happy for that first glass of Malbec? No question. And part of me wonders to myself, as I have wondered before: Do I really need it?

But this time, I know the answer is that, no, I don’t think so. But I like it – a lot. I see the beauty in the world, with and without drinking, but I love the option of adding some sepia tones to it, when I can.