A Diseased High

    A diseased high. A poisoned high. Daily surrender to my alcoholism always meaning another drink. A daily chipping away at my selfhood by my disease. And what was left after the chipping away? Not Mount Rushmore. My brain fragments on this sculptor's floor. The dust of my disease. The oxygen masks, the intravenous drips, the sedatives.

    How, having barely survived all of this for years on end, can I have come out on this other end today, feeling whole, joyful, alive?

    I cannot doubt this good and goodly end result.

    Gratitude.

Evening Meditation:

 

    I stand before the firing squad and am asked if I would like to smoke a cigarette before the execution countdown begins. "No thanks, I'm trying to quit."

    This is my insanity. Part of my insanity. Addiction has rearranged reality. The new normal is insane still, if substance-free. Insanity will forever be part of my sanity.


    "No thanks, I gave at the office."


    "No thanks, I'm trying to live."

 
    "No thanks, thanks."

    “Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 63)