He would drag himself into the kitchen and examine the line-up of empty quarts and pints on the floor under the sink, pick them up separately and hold them upside down over a small glass, one by one for minutes at a time, extracting a last sticky drop from one bottle, two drops from another, maybe nothing from a third, and so on through a long patient nerve-wracking process till he had collected enough, perhaps to cover the bottom of the glass. It was like a rite - the slow drinking of it more so ; and it was never enough.
The Lost Weekend
Charles Jackson
1944
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