That friend I mentioned yesterday to whom I said my piece and about whom I worry. This is about recovery, addiction, sobriety. They’ve been in recovery for many years, in and out of it, and what it looks like to them, the terms they’ve come to with it, aren’t what it might look like to another person, and I get that. They’ve found psychedelic avenues that present a benign version of escape. I have an opinion about that. I say fine. Me too. But here’s the other opinion I have about their other choices, the not so psychedelic which was their downfall, which I hear still happens from time to time to, and now they’ve met a person who is not in recovery at all. Far from it. The opposite of recovery. Lighting fires everywhere. Which you and I know is Lois Lane and Kryptonite all rolled into one. Yet here’s another ingredient to throw at this heady mix. Loneliness, of which my friend has suffered greatly. So they’ve met someone who lights their fires and keeps them warm and makes them shocked at their good fortune. They wrote to me and said even as I write this it feels like a fiction. They can’t believe it, after all these years, someone is loving them. And they want it to last, and they want to care for this person with whom they have more in common than you can shake a stick at. Including a history of abuse, trauma and addiction. I read them the slow news riot act - all addicts end up in one of four places: prison, hospital, sobriety or death. No exceptions. They said yes, I know and they do, better than most. They said I want to care for [this person]. I replied then care for your sobriety. And then I spoke about it later with Andy and he said if you gave them a choice - the loneliness they’ve suffered or six months of fire and falling off a cliff, which would they rather? and it was a good question. They will find out and so will we and the selfishness of love, mine for them, my friend, sat up and sat down again.
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That last line. Really good! I hesitate to use the term sobriety for myself, but it's been three months now without a drink, and I can understand that feeling of fragility, how easily sobriety could crumble in the wrong circumstances. During a time of transition in my family, I've tried to simplify things for myself with a philosophy of "Good stuff in, bad stuff out." But your essay shows how it's never that simple.
Beautiful. I felt this in my bones. I notice that when sober friends are not so sober that it highlights in me how tenuous my own stability (if I’m honest, my own sanity) feels, most of the time. There are still (and, I assume, will always be) parts of me that crave chaos as much as I crave drugs, or any altered state of being.