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)