The Lost Weekend

“He was no fool like other people (they who believed his promises when he knew better than to believe them himself); and knowing it, he yet craved the drink that would bring the whole ruin down upon him again.
“And what of the passing and lost, the uncounted and unrecoverable days used up in those depths? The time that went down the drain and never came back? What thing was there in all the world that could ever repay you for those days...?
“And wasn't that using up life frightfully fast, or—worse than fast—unaware? Time was all you had, all anyone had, and you weren't counting, you let it slip by as if the unused day or week might offer itself over again tomorrow. But it didn't and couldn't—it had been used even though you hadn't used it. Had you no better use for precious time than that? What are you if the chief good and market of your time be but to drink and sleep? Hadn't you in youth often cried out what a day to be alive? And how many days had there been, since, when you weren't even able to long for death? Why ask how many? You could never say, you had lost count too long ago. The lost lost days, so many that you were something a good deal less than your thirty-three years, many months less, whole gaps and periods of your life taken out in blank—most shameful and wanton waste of all, because nothing could ever give them back again. Compensation for your loss, recovery of time itself, lay only in re-entering that blank once more where time was uncounted and time didn't count, drinking yourself out of the middle of the week and into your timeless time-out.”
—The Lost Weekend