Free and not free.

　　 The young, teenaged girl, physically malformed, suffering from a severe brain disorder, stood outside the port-cochere at Trump Plaza. Somehow left alone for a very few moments as I happened to walk by, she had the composure and the demeanor of someone exquisitely rich, from the upper stratospheres of class, a Kennedy or Vanderbilt, perhaps. Her wealth, inherited, could not be hidden behind her obvious physical and mental deformities.

　　 I have survived this day and my alcohol addiction and wish only to quietly pass by her, rich in my disease, my deformity. I succeed, finally, to pass by her equally noticed and not noticed, equally proud, free and not free.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 88)

Connections

　　 Drunk dreams, drunken dreams. What different worlds these are. Sober now, my drunk dreams are nearly always nightmares. When I was drunk and drinking and drowning in liquor, my dreams were oh-so different, because my life was different. My life was alcohol then. My life is sobriety, now. Living soberly, now. But the Sirens of Alcohol still call on me from a distant shore. If I stay connected, I will not fall apart. Connections with other alcoholics seems always to work. I am not a lab rat in a horrible experiment gone wrong.

   To remain sober, I have to remain human and to be human is to be connected.

　Daily vigilance/Daily reprieve. Today, that is enough.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 87)

Treadmill

   Sitting in a bar, I could feel my self-anxiety coupled with the anxiety of waiting for the next drink. That drink. The drink over there. That next drink. I knew it would help. I knew it could squelch, squelch this anxiety. In here. In the pit of my stomach. In the center of my heart. That drink there. This hurt here. Bartender? Bartender? 　
    I did not know for a long, long time that the anxiety of waiting for the next drink was the broken tool that could not fix the treadmill I was on. The days when I could savor a drink, turn the brandy snifter in my hand, admiring the dance of light upon it and throughout it, the aroma of its rich vapors, the shades of color, the tinkling of glasses held in a toast, hushed, background chatter of a cheerful crowd, the quieting of a hurried day, revelers lost in the ritual of happy hour: Those days have been savagely destroyed in medicinal hospital whites, hospital blacks, hospital grays.
 
　
    That drink is dead. Long live this drunk.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 86)

　



Gold Snowflakes

　　    Gold. She spun gold. My Grandmother. Her faith, from the outside, from my ten year old being, seemed based on what? Not knowing? Not not knowing?

　　    I would shrug my shoulders. It was the sounds she had memorized but did not know the meaning of, a Latin chant that transported her and gave her a certain faith. A certainty based on the experience of sounds she knew, but did not know the meaning of.

　　    Snowflakes, cut from folded paper in a child's hands. I did not know how each cut would fill and unfill this octagon of paper after being cut and upon being unfolded.

　　    I spun gold snowflakes through her prayers.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 85)


All Drinking Aside

　　 Drunk is a dream. Drunk dreams are drunk. Dream is a drink. Drank is a drunk.

　　 There is no way to be where I might have been by now. That child was never born. That child could not control the drink. That child was deserted. That child's death is no coincidence. That child could not make it stop.

　　 Because I don't remember, perhaps it was not real. I do not know what he feels.

　　 All drinking aside, I did not drink today.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft,  Chapter 84)

Beethoven's Fifth?

　　 I remember thinking something like "without alcohol, I am nothing." Back then my sense of self-identity was so tied  up in the drink. I did not think of alcohol as my crutch, but rather, as my inspiration. I had bought wholesale, retail and at half price, the belief that alcohol was the taproot from which my creative processes grew.
　
　　 To suffer for my art- that was the grand illusion, my biggest excuse. The "holes in time," as Matt, an AA buddy, calls it.
　

　　 All the lies, truths, half-truths, everything that has happened to me, have brought me here and I can be happy

now. Free of alcohol, I have access to my spirit. "Catch the beat. Dance your feet."

       Go figure.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 83)

A Fire from within....

        Loving to drink. Living to drink. Dying to drink. Dying from drinking. This is the progression of alcoholism. Wanting to live. Learning to live. Loving to live. Living with love. This is the progression of recovery. Alcoholism, a progressive disease, requires a progressive solution, a program of recovery (like a 12 Step Program).

 
　　 I have been motivated, inspired, filled with gratitude. This is affirmation arisen from despair.

 
　　 Recovery seems to be broadcloth made from these interwoven threads of motivation and inspiration, a fine tapestry. I want to wear it like a loose-fitting garment. Most of the time meditation and prayer only seem possible in stillness and in silence, but sometimes they seem to linger with me as I move and speak.

 
　　 This is part of the reason why it can be said that gratitude is an action word. It is not only something you reflect upon, but something you carry with you, a fire from within that is to be shared.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 82)

The Porcelain Goddess

　　 Bad discovery: the day I discovered that when drinking made me puke, drinking more would stop the puking. A few small sips and then more puking. A few more small sips and then still more puking. More sips. More puking. Eventually the puking stops. But the drinking doesn’t stop. The drinking does not, will not stop. Fighting against the drink, against the will to drink and the will to not drink, Wanting the puking to stop. Then surrender and drinking to oblivion. 

　　 “Would you like a chaser with that?” 

  　      I chased the drink until the drink chased me. The porcelain goddess. Kneel to the porcelain goddess. Kneel.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 81)

My Second Insanity

　　 My first sobriety was my second insanity. My first job sober was at the Salvation Army. I was over medicated on antidepressants and was consequently fired for moving　too slowly. I was quickly rehired by a bar I had worked at several years before.　　

　　 As any bartender can tell you, in most bars, a good proportion of regular, daily grind customers are alcoholics in various stages in the progression of their disease and in various degrees of denial.　　

　　 For this alcoholic, at that time, I really thought I could work in that snake pit without being bitten.　

　　 A good time was not had by all.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 80)

Trust

　　 The Doctor diagnosed my condition as a sinus infection and gave me a prescription for antibiotics. Knowing I would be well in ten days made me feel subjectively better instantly. Nothing changed but my faith in the knowledge that things would change.

　　 If  I can learn to apply this kind of trust to everything in my life, then I will feel better now and feeling better now will guide me into feeling better in my future. Of course, this is a hard concept to hold onto and an easy one to let slip out of my hands, but I just have to keep repeating it until it becomes my heartbeat, my heartbeat, my heart.

　　 "The older I get the more I trust in the law according to which the rose and the lily bloom."

-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 79)
 　　　　　　　　　　　
 

f

The Wood Carver

 

   My father was a wood carver. He carved ducks out of wood. Like Michelangelo searching for the block of marble that contained the statue he would sculpt, in a block of wood, my father searched for a duck. He had the right tools. He was motivated. He was inspired.

    For years I never had a reason to quit drinking and by the time I had a reason to quit, reason no longer had anything to do with it. I drank for escape and I ended up being unable to escape from drinking.

    Now, years sober, I have found many of the tools of recovery. There are those who　have inspired me, motivated me. Slowly, patiently, I must carve the frustration, self-pity and despair out of this block of wood. Carve out the envy, anxiety and intolerance. File down the burrs of hatred, jealousy and resentment. Chisel out the suspicion and sarcasm, the mistrust. Get rid of the apathy, the remorse, the self-deception. Cast out the doubt, the blame, the fear. Scrape out contempt and cynicism. Smooth out the rough edges.
　
A.A. has given me the tools. There are those who　have motivated me,　inspired me.
Someday I hope to walk and to talk like a duck. And I pray that I will float.
Drinking kicks you down the steps. The Twelve Steps lift you up.

    Now, let’s go fishin’!


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 78) 

My Separate Reality

   At that time, it was not uncommon for me to arrange to be in one of my favorite advertising clients offices around four o’clock on a Friday, drinking scotch on the rocks in Andy’s real estate office, high above the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Andy was a good twenty years older than I was at the time (this was 1984 or 5) and I marveled at how rich and successful he was and still able to belt down scotch like a  perfect gentleman.   


    I imagined that I would one day be able to be successful, like him, and to be able to drink successfully, like him, but I was chasing the illusion of all alcoholics that somehow, someday, my drinking could be, would be, better and different. This was before several relapses　finally taught me, that for an alcoholic like me, I could never drink successfully, and that, no matter what else happened, or how long I went without a drink, it would always and could only, end worse.


    The best I could do was to imagine that my drinking would be manageable.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 77)
　




Another Joke?

    Bad joke, so let's just call it "an imaginary conversation":

   "Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim. Why, why, why, why, why do you drink?"

   "I drink to forget."

   "What are you trying to forget?"

   "I don't remember.... You see! It's working!"


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 76)

 

Joke Time

(Vatchi):　 Sotto, sobriety is a balance of emotions and reason.　Jim is a toddler on the sobriety tightrope. He can't be expected to express what he does not yet understand.
　
   The old joke used to be "this job gets in the way of my drinking." Twenty jobs and thirty years later, the new joke is "this job gets in the way of my recovery."

   I like both jokes equally well, especially since I'm on the sunny side of sober. A sunny smile now. The teeth are now false, but the smile is real.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 75)

 

An Elegant Universe

   The universe can be seen as elegant, on one hand, or a slag heap of human suffering, on the other. All of that is secondary to the drink for me. For me, for me, for me, I must stay connected to my sobriety or some final separation will occur. That final separation is a drink. And for me, to drink is to die.



from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 74)

Sex with a Virgin

   At one time it was believed by many that sex with a virgin was a sure cure for AIDS. Or so went the rumors spread in certain ill-informed subcultures. Turned out that it didn't stop AIDS. Didn't cure AIDS. But it did do one hell of a job of spreading AIDS. And fear. And violence against women.

   "Here, this will cure what ails you," the bartender says. Turns out drinking alcohol will not cure an alcoholic.
 
   Today I must insist on abstinence. A drink would be violence against myself.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 73)

Insanity's Bouquet

(Surimi): Sotto, there's a certain truth to what you're saying about Jim using words to separate him from reality. The symbol, the word, can be a kind of substitute for the reality it is trying to describe. Worse than non-alcoholic beer.

   Words are signposts along Jim's road to recovery. I think you're right though, Sotto. His recovery lies beyond his words, whether it be Jane's death or the birth of a sober  self.
    Insanity's bouquet is not of different colored roses, or different flowers of various sorts. It's a bouquet of weapons, destruction, defense and offense, all wrapped in lies and gin-soaked tears, false laughter, hollowed-out bones. This is insanity's bouquet.
   I will fill the black holes of my memory with my retrained brain. Live my waay sober or lie my way drunk, powerless victim or sober victor.

   One foot in front of the other.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 72)

Virtuous Progress or Virtual Hell?

　　 Like a bird flying past the boundaries of North and South Carolina, unknowingly, I was crossing borders, thousands of them, the borders between active addiction and sustained sobriety.

　　 Flying above the myths, the prejudices of perception, the taboos, I feel one incontrovertible fact, the irony of survival being the prize of survival, the everything that is nothing, the enigma which occurs when struggle becomes effortless.

　　 Life is cool. No drink, no sweat.

(Surimi):　 

     "Virtuous cycles of progress." I like that, Vatchi. It's life beyond the myth, the foregone prejudices of myth, the unnecessary, the non-thinking.

      The irony of consequences with unattributable causes, because the causes are too many, too varied, too complex.

     Somehow, the victim has become the survivor.

     Virtuous progress or virtual hell?

　

　 Do people know what they're asking when they ask, "Why doesn't he just stop?"?


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 71)

It's never just me.

　　 Those drunken, imaginary and insane fears were no less real than the factual fears of a knife at my throat, a gun in my back or the rest of my blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, drunken reality. Fear, a beating in my head when I had no drum. Pounding. Pounding.　

　　 Sobriety has helped me rid the imaginary fears so that I can better face the real ones. Alcoholic friends (in sobriety) instead of an alcoholic drink in my hand. It really took me about five years of sobriety for it to begin feeling comfortable, sustainable. 　

　　 I stand a chance in recovery when I maintain some sense of "we". When it's just me, it's never just me. Alcohol and my alcoholism are always here. Beside me and inside me.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 70)

"Worthy of his sufferings"

(Vatchi):　 Sotto, I think you're right. He's almost talking like a Norman Normal now. Enough chaos has preceded this. Jim should be grateful for what he has now and grateful that his past, horrible as much of it had been because, finally,it has brought him to this point in his sobriety. 　

　　 Jim has become "worthy of his sufferings". He must learn to accept this or I think he is primed to become a victim of his past once again, Sotto. 


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 69)

Sometimes

On the edge of now between yesterday and tomorrow. Between vigilance and calm. Between fear and doubt. I seek balance, not on a tightrope, but balance on a "broad highway". Less extremes, more serenity. Give me that. It's that that I seek. No more next drink. No next drink.
　　 More of this. Just this. This.
　　 Some people hide behind their bottle far beyond the scope of their addictions. Some people hide within the rooms of recovery far after their obsession to drink leaves them. Sometimes, I am some people, too.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 68)

Moral Weakness?

　　 Looking for excuses, the denial part of my addiction to alcohol is different from all of the above. The bitch part is that since 90% of people can drink socially and are not addicted to alcohol, my alcoholism is far too often seen as a moral weakness rather than a disease. It is no small irony that our culture's denial of alcohol's addictive potential plays a part in relapse. After a sustained period of sobriety, it is no wonder that people in recovery think that they can begin drinking as the rest of the non-alcoholic world drinks. 　

　　 Once I start drinking, I can't stop. Woe, but were it so simple. It's staying stopped, living sober, that's the problem. A program of recovery, a sobriety maintenance regimen, is what time and relapse after relapse have finally taught me. "A daily reprieve, that's all I have." That's AA lingo and my experience has shown it to be true. Staying connected with other alcoholics keeps me connected with my disease　and the disastrous effects of my "built-in forgetter".

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 67)



Insanity Cubed

    This cocaine is cut with something.　But it is not cut with reality.    When I'm drinking, it feels like reality would suck with or without the drink. So, what the hell, "I may as well drink."
   The insanity of this insanity is that even after a sustained period of sobriety, for me, that “I may as well drink" thinking returns. Even after relapse number one or two or three.

 I am Insanity Cubed.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 66)
　






Collapse

　　 The lights outside the hospital emergency room were like the lights on the landing strip of an airport and I was a helicopter hovering, hovering, hovering.

　　 I stood on the street outside the emergency room of the Atlantic City Hospital . I had been in a blackout and I did not know how I got there. Finally, a paramedic came over to me, after five or twenty minute. An hour? I don’t know.
  　 “Do you need help?”

　　 I answered, “This is not working. This
is not working. The alcohol is not working. I cannot do what this is now, not working….”
　　 I collapsed on the street like a sandcastle knocked over by a wave.
 　 My sand spread out onto the sidewalk.



from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 65)


Drank myself sober

(Surimi):　 Guys, inescapable charm is definitely not Jim’s problem. But I think he's finally beginning to realize the big difference between being drunk and sober. Water lifts all boats, but apparently not the same can be said for alcohol.
   His extremes, his drunken fire and ice. Sobriety, and all that comes with it is more balanced, more centered and less extreme than his active addiction was.

   His cadence and his rhythm are now more clearly a reflection of his life. Addiction is chaos. Sobriety will eventually have a calming effect on almost anyone.

   I drank myself sober sometimes. My mind would seek to find some equilibrium. Despite my drunkenness, my mind stood at cross purposes with my substance of abuse. I couldn't have known that then, or at least I didn't know that. Did not know that.

   In the most strange of strangest ways, I finally (and finally) drank myself sober.

   And that is that is that.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 64)

How high was I, really?

(Surimi):　
Good doubt. Bad doubt. Without a doubt, doubt plays heavily in Jim's life, the life of all alcoholics perhaps, perhaps all people, Sotto, Vatchi.
   There are, I am sure, unintended meanings in much of what he says, just as there were unintended consequences to his "alcoholic lifestyle".

    He has the nerve to ask, "How high was I really?"
    Intentionally ambiguous or not, I wish that I could squelch that doubt for him.
     Forever powerless. Of that, there can be no doubt. None whatsoever.
     Permanently powerless, the high, in any meaningful sense, can only be an illusion.

    A diseased high. A poisoned high. Daily surrender to my alcoholism always meaning another drink.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 63)

Hatred and Self-Hatred

(Vatchi): ....     Jim could hold his liquor. The bigger question is this: Can he hold his sobriety?

   Sometimes my recovery group meetings feel like packs of reclusives bound together by the hopes of another day sober, despite society casting us off and under cover, like a leper colony. We are freaks to be reviled, mislabeled, misunderstood, hated and full of self-hatred, blamed and full of self-blame.

   All that the world scorns, we scorn in ourselves.       from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 62)

　



Change, for a change

　When I rebelled against this thing or that thing, in favor of the drink, a rebellious nature became my habit. A habit caused by drinking. The power of the habit turned rabid. It's the old "problems caused me to drink more and more drinking caused more problems." That routine had to change. Habit rabid and rotten routine.

I've got to keep changing if I want to keep staying sober.

"The man I was will drink again."

That is the blessing and the curse of sobriety for an alcoholic. Change or die.

Change is good. And yes, change is frightening. And yes,

I did not drink today.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 61)



"Illusions are Closer than They Appear"

    Everything that alcohol did to me in the end seemed impossible. Like some magic trick. Wait. How'd he do that?

   Alcohol, the magician, pulled optimism out of my ear like a gold coin which then vanished in his hand. Wait a minute. How'd he do that? Delusional reality?

   Mirrors, Baby, mirrors.    Alcohol, the magician. How'd he do that? Money, poof. Up in smoke. Smoke and mirrors. Smoke disappears. Mirrors disappear. I disappear.     There used to be a time when it felt like there was a right way to drink and drug.

   How did that time disappear? When did time disappear?

   Fuck.

(Vatchi):
(Speechless, shuffles his feet)　

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 60)

"Double-Visionary"

(Surimi): ... This is not How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
　

　　 Am I less than forget? Am I fear? Am I bread, unbuttered and dropped on some psychiatric floor? Am I manners? Mannerisms? Is this all that is left when the alcohol is taken out? Omitted. Dignity omitted. None or one or three hot meals and a cot.

　　 Dignity, that ugly shoe. Is that the only thing left hanging over my head like a hangman's noose? Stolen, lost, broken. In too many hospitals that have names and some that don't or didn't or can't or won't. Memories burned. The old memory gone. Asleep or awake, it's the same disaster. Visionary, double-visionary, disaster.

　　 Crippled by alcohol. I am crippled.

　　 No monologue, no dialogue. Dead, but not dead....

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 59)




Can I?

   Going from beat up by alcoholism to upbeat about sobriety did not happen overnight.

   Addiction is a culture of inevitable failure. My sobriety feels like a me today instead of a feel for one more drink. Plain English: I just feel good sober. 　

    "A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us."- Franz Kafka　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
   Like a leaf floating on a lake and drifting off, can you live through your emotions and just let them go? Can you?
   from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 58)
　


Yin Yang Recovery

    Most of my physical alcoholic overhaul was achieved in a few days. No permanent liver damage. Vital signs apparently somewhat normal. Three hernia operations at most coincidentally related to my alcoholism.
 

    My real healing is mental change. And that has been slow, but progressively better. I've even come to accept my many relapses as part of my recovery progress and process.

    The physical obsession to drink has long gone and now I have just the occasional battle with the thought of a drink. I have been learning to 'participate in my own recovery'.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 57)

Childhood Romanticized

   It is so easy to romanticize the past, I guess. But clearly, the life of my childhood was easy. I really did love staying at my Uncle Paul's and Aunt Edith's farm for one week every summer. Milking the cows by hand and collecting the eggs from the henhouse. Playing the broken piano that sat on the back porch. Rusting piano wires.

(Sotto): Piano wires again. What's with the piano wires?

(Vatchi): Clearly, he's getting off track here. Christ, he needs a fact-checker. What does this have to do with anything? Sotto, I don't know if this is some diversionary tactic of his or what. He doesn't know about us, so this must be some kind of delusion or flashback.

   Just have some patience. He'll come back around. He's not totally derailed.

   Yet.

   Son of a bitch! Maybe my childhood seemed so great, not because I was a child, but because it preceded the onset of my alcoholic catastrophes.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 56)

 

"Donkey 54, Where Are You?"

Back in the Old West, the Pony Express was called 'express' because it was fast for those times. Today, our Postal Service is jokingly called 'Snail Mail' because it is perceived as slow relative to the instantaneous internet. The fact is that 'Snail Mail' is far faster now than the Pony Express was then. By far. And a drink is fast. Far too fast for me. A drink is far too deadly fast for me. Too Fast. Far too fast. Deadly, deadly, slowly, slowly fast.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 55) 

Zombie Feeding Time

    Zombie waiting lines- I'm standing in line for my cafeteria tray at the Lakewood Hospital , my first real rehab. High on Librium, looking and feeling like death. Dragging my feet with my body following and my mind two steps further back. I am on my way to discover my new god. My new god is frozen yogurt. When more was not enough, that was the avalanche of alcohol. More is not enough: Alcohol. More is enough: Frozen Yogurt God. Zombie trudge. Trudge, fudge, nudge, drudge. Left, right, left, right. Zombie feeding time. Mmmmm. mmmm, God.

 

    The yogurt seemed enough, was enough, until the Librium wore off. Then the God of Frozen Yogurt melted. So maybe it wasn't the frozen yogurt at all that was my new god. My new god would be the Librium until every cell in my body had mourned the death of alcohol. I kept switching gods: alcohol, Librium, frozen yogurt, then back to Librium.

 

    If only getting sober meant only getting sober. Oh, how easy it would be. But that is not how it is writ. A few days sober doesn't change too much of anything. When the Librium wore off, all I wanted was another drink. And to stop melting.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 54)



"Clue"

   Those two detectives were trying to torture a confession out of me (just like when alcohol had me down for the count and tortured an admission of powerlessness out of me). They were trying to find a way of making me contradict myself, catch me in lie, get me to admit. Let a name slip out: the murdered, the murderer or his accomplice. But I didn't have a clue. Mr. Green in the Laboratory with a Rope? I really had no clue.
　



   Finally, they gave up and released me. But alcohol did not release me. Alcohol did not stop torturing me, punishing me, hurting me, then helping me get over that hurt. Insanity.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 53) 



Simon Says

I cannot betray today, the sober days leading up to now, this certain resiliency which I have somehow obtained, this gift. One drink would toss that all away. I'm invested in my sobriety now as I once was too invested in drinking as a means of self-definition. Moving forward in my sobriety actually feels good today, natural. My ever more painful relapses have brought me through these rings of fire to my current calm and sober place, a recovery enhanced by the routine miracle of breath.
　

Simon says, "Stay sober."
　

"Simon Says," the schoolyard game, "Drinking game... Over."
　

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 52)

One Trick Pony?

(Vatchi): .... His progress in recovery is slow and tedious and now you're mocking and oblivious. He'll hold up the truth for all eyes to see and then hide himself behind a joke.

 　 Jim's still in the holding cell. He's still hurting. He still lives in fear. He still uses ego as a weapon.　     

        
      Sotto, look behind his words.

　  I couldn't stop drinking. Who in their right mind would wake up after spending a fortune while in a blackout and continue drinking? The "Fucked Up Stops Here" never happened. The instant my blackout would start, I was feeding my disease and nothing else. If　alcoholism is insane, blackout drinking is even more insane. 　

 　 It's so easy after a few years of being sober to wonder why I didn't stop drinking. And it　became so easy after a few years of sobriety to forget how insane it was. That is why, for me, connection with other alcoholics is so key to my continuing sobriety. 　

　　　"Staying stopped"- that's the trick. Please, lucky horseshoe, let me be a one-trick pony.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 51)

Matter and Antimatter

No matter how bad the hangover in the morning, I could always find an inescapable reason to get drunk that very next night, no matter what. No matter how strongly I may have told myself “never again,” the disease of alcoholism would dissolve my resolve before the liquid night called alcohol would dissolve my brain....

[Sotto, Vatchi and Surimi speak before Jim concludes the chapter]:

Nothing matters more than that we remain sober because when we remain sober, everything matters more.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 50)

The Prize is the Punishment

(Surimi):　 Pain is a great motivator, coach, if you will. "Get out there and fight" or "Get in there and fight." 

Forty-eight flavors and they're all alcohol.
 The prize is the punishment.
  The prize is the punishment in that insane world.
 The prize is the punishment.
  It's "Here, this'll cure what ails you."

And it's "Thanks, Coach. Thanks, Coach."

And there is no goal to go. Done. Done. Done. The Finish Line. And no one won.

"Thanks, Coach. Thanks."


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 49)

The Odd Ending to "This Pickle Must Change"

　　 Murder in the first degree, premeditated murder. "Alcohol is out to kill you." That kind of murder. That kind of murderer.

　　 Just short of paranoid, I felt alcohol was out to get me when I first got sober. I would meditate to block out the beast, to find peace. Meditate/Premeditated. It makes some insane senseless sense.

　　 Serenity, find me now.

   “What do I know of man’s destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.” - Samuel Beckett

 

   Are you a one-trick pony? Can you learn to be free?

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 48)