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)