Sunday, July 8, 2012

"The World is on Fire"

A man jumps out of a burning building, his clothing consumed in flames. Ripping off his clothes, some of his skin and burning flesh comes off with the shirt he was wearing. The blisters are now just forming, the smoke and stench of burning hair in the air. Paramedics struggle to put him on a stretcher, his arms and legs flailing from the pain of his suffering, his screams drowning out the screams of the sirens.
Suddenly, he breaks free from the paramedics and runs back into the burning building, the wall now consumed in flames.
This is the insanity of alcoholism. This is relapse. And this will happen again and again, each time just a little bit differently, but each time progressively worse.
Insanity is doing the same things again and again and expecting different results. The insanity of my disease wants me to cross through the threshold of that door, cross back to drink, to think that more is more.
 
from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 48)

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