The cage door was always open....

   I cling tenaciously to my sobriety, like a true bonsai in nature might cling to an outcropping of rocks, a life in miniature.

   Emotions eroded by the flow of alcohol through my veins stunted my maturing process. Much, if not most, of sobriety has been simply learning to grow up no longer under the influence. Addictions' lies appearing bigger than the truths they obscured. Fragile, unverifiable, contaminated, directionless, I was delivered to the doors of the rooms of recovery powerless over my addictions, frightened, a pathological and tragic figure at best. The cage door of addiction was always open and I was afraid of freedom from addiction because it was incomprehensible and seemed impossible.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 47)