a reminder: me, surrounded by and infested with, addiction.

Addiction, I tell you, isn't an epic tale of redemption, material for your amazing memoir and appearance on Oprah. It isn't a James Dean movie, a Hemingway story, or a Jimi Hendrix/Kurt Cobain song of suffering, hyper-intense genius. It's dying by choking on your own vomit. It's common as excrement and as profound: reeking, valueless, purposeless, pointless, meaningless.
    There's no little essence of wisdom suspended in the whiskey, no sparkling geode crystals inside the rock, no signal in the smoke. There just is nothing there.