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)