Unraveling Darkness: How Kyle Kouri’s The Problem Drinker Reveals the Hidden Struggles Behind Addiction
In the middle of the memoir, a pair of tragedies — Kouri’s sister is near death after the 0.6 blood alcohol overdose and Leede’s cousin Nick, someone Kouri is also particularly close to — pushes Kouri into a period of heavy dependence on his drinking. When Kouri and Leede travel to Copenhagen before needing to fly back to Texas for Nick’s funeral, their grieving habits stand in stark contrast: Kouri leans heavily on whiskey at night; during the day, Leede walks for miles. Because Kouri’s drinking leads him to pass out one night, he misses that Leede experienced another panic attack. “I was out cold and couldn’t do anything about it,” Kouri writes. “Like an asshole.” When, in Texas for the funeral, Kouri asks Leede what she needs, and she asks him to “not get too drunk tonight,” Kouri agrees, “because I would do anything for her.”
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