"Fireworks of Darkness within Darkness"

    It is endlessly fascinating how memory works. I can remember very clearly the fear I felt when I got off the bus from Lakeside, after leaving my very first Rehab Hospital.

   Just short of kicking and screaming, I literally begged to not leave the Rehab after the mandatory maximum fourteen day stay. I knew what had always happened to me in the past. I would leave a detox and despite myself, a drink would find its way into my hands that very day. That is all I knew to do when I got out. I knew how to drink, but I did not know how to not drink. All kidding aside, how could I put all drinking aside?

   I was 'sick and tired' of relapse after relapse yet, despite my best intentions, I knew I could not do it alone.


from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 23)