BY SARAH LEVY
SOCIETY
I HAVE ALWAYS HAD THE URGE TO LIE. AS A CHILD, I TOLD classmates that I had a new puppy at home. I was afraid of dogs and had never even asked my parents for one, but I understood that pets were attractive to other 6-year-olds. When Julie, a French girl with a blunt haircut, came over for a playdate, she looked skeptical when I told her my dog was in the other room. “He’s sleeping,” I explained. When she accused me of lying, I finally introduced her to Lucky, my plush stuffed dalmatian, holding him the way I had seen my mom cradle my baby brother. “Shh,” I whispered to Julie. She never came over again.
I told white lies, mostly. “I’m majoring in biology,” I once rattled off to a stranger at a nail salon despite having zero interest in science. Other lies were random, like when I told a crush that I had spent the previous Saturday night at a party with Adrian Grenier (nope), and that I had been in seven serious relationships before (I was 26 and had two ex-boyfriends).
Some lies were bigger and more serious, like the Sunday evening I woke up in the emergency room after blacking out at brunch and falling down a flight of stairs. I had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and because I was only 24 and still on my parents’ health-insurance plan, I panicked at the thought of them receiving a bill in the mail. The truth about my blackout seemed too horrible to tell them; I didn’t want them to worry. So I told them I had been hit by a cab instead.
Of all the people I lied to, I was the best at lying to myself. Researchers have dubbed this act “self-deception,” explaining that it involves a degree of mental dissociation. I knew my blackouts were dangerous, problematic, and unmanageable, but I was entirely unwilling to give up drinking. So I developed mental processes that allowed me to ignore selective memories and told myself what I wanted to hear: When I woke up with vomit in my hair after heavily drinking the night before, I decided I had just gotten carsick on the cab ride home. If I blacked out and cried, it was because I was stressed about work. When I went home with a guy I couldn’t remember meeting, I pretended it was a funny story. I switched from vodka to tequila to white wine to beer to vodka again, telling myself this time would be different. I wanted to believe I had control over the way my brain and body processed alcohol, but the truth was I never had any idea what would happen once I started to drink.
There were nights I tripped on sidewalks and curbs, the ground rushing up underneath
