Quote by Elizabeth Gilbert

“Speaking of distortions of reality, I would guess that it was probably sometime around 2011 that I started noticing that the love of my life always carried bottles of Angostura bitters around with her, hidden in her purse. Maybe you are familiar with this concoction, maybe not. Bitters are a staple of every bar—a potent proprietary blend of herbs, spices, and alcohol that, when added to certain cocktails, both deepens and brightens the flavor profiles of those drinks. Bitters deliver such an intense taste sensation that you don’t need much of the stuff—just a dash. But Rayya wasn’t using the bitters to brighten up a cocktail—because she didn’t drink cocktails, because she was sober. And she wasn’t adding a few drops to some nonalcoholic beverage, either, as people sometimes do. No, she was just straight-up drinking the stuff, before, during, and after every meal—on the rocks—often downing an entire bottle at a time. And Angostura bitters have an alcohol content of 44.7 percent, which is equivalent to most vodkas, whiskeys, rums, and tequilas. Now, I know this doesn’t make sense—that somebody who claimed to be sober was also drinking every day—but that’s what Rayya was doing. She was doing this, mind you, while she was still telling her story of sobriety at twelve-step meetings (including Alcoholics Anonymous meetings) and also writing a memoir about her victory over substance addiction. Soon the bottles of Angostura bitters started showing up everywhere—not only in her purse but also in her suitcase, in the fridge, on the kitchen shelves next to her boxes of cereal, in the glove compartment of her car. She even kept bottles of bitters—multiple bottles—at her friends’ houses for when she came over to visit. (We all kept finding them in the weirdest places for years after she died.) She always had to check her luggage when we flew, because she wouldn't go anywhere without a significant stash of these magical little bottles. I never questioned any of this, because I never questioned anything Rayya did back then, because I essentially saw Rayya as a godlike figure who was always right about everything. Nevertheless, she did once tell me that a doctor had “prescribed” the bitters to her, to help her digest her food and to take the edge off her chronic stomach pain. Now, I don’t know what the doctor actually said, because I wasn’t there. I do know a few things, though. I know that, a few years later, Rayya would also tell me that a doctor had prescribed cocaine to her (don’t worry; we’ll get to that story eventually), so she may not have been a reliable narrator on such matters. But I also know that Angostura is what’s commonly called a digestif—which is exactly what it sounds like: something that helps with digestion. The mixture, in fact, was created in 1824 by the German surgeon general of Simón Bolívar’s army, who prescribed it to his troops in Venezuela to ease their stomach problems. Angostura bitters, in other words, were indeed once used medicinally. Then again, so was cocaine.”

Quote by Elizabeth Gilbert