Unrelated

Went through a stack of nicotine pouches to find this one

It not all that difficult for an alcoholic to put down the bottle. Yes — I expect you to say something about me being a moron, my words oxymoronic. Of course you’d say that. You’re not an alcoholic.

But I am,

so I know.

You see, I was twenty-six when I had had enough of the habit. Twenty-six when it was time to bring that chapter to a close. After all the lying, cheating, backstabbing, the drink had decided that time was up.

Everyone imagines that the addict struggles with the object of their addiction.

How far from the truth that is.

The real struggle is making the decision.

The real fight is acknowledging that it takes time to nurture the addiction and to quit would mean

having more time.

The addict is terrified of time.

Terrified. Petrified. Mortified.

And so, he bargains.

Scours high and low for something — anything — to keep him a fetus eternally in utero. He’s not ready for the light. Not ready for that surge of oxygen or the rush of nitrogen let alone argon, carbon dioxide…

The addict is not ready for life.

Never has been.

Most acknowledge the vast emptiness, the crippling fear and, in dread, say,

I’ll stick to the bottle.

They already started running. It isn’t all that easy to stop.

Others, like me, seek out a replacement.

It’s easy to put down the bottle

because the bottle was never the problem.

The problem, if you can even call it that, is a lingering discomfort, an ache, an unreachable itch within the self. Every organ, muscle, cell, atom — like a choir in despair — screaming

I hate it here. I hate it here.

How do you silence that?

How do you silence that?

Booze is great.

Booze is great cause for so long as your staggering and stammering and hurling your pain into a toilet bowl, everything else is struggling to find equilibrium.

You can’t hate the Civic as it carries you from city to city. You only get to hate it when its parked next to your friend’s Mercedes.

When its at rest.

Booze won’t let you rest,

and in the pain it causes you,

the pain it causes others,

therein lies meaning.

Better a pissed wife

than a discordant self.

That’s why the alcoholic remains an alcoholic. He knows it, doesn’t he? He hears the silence, the calmness, the ordinariness of life reigniting the thoughts, the whispers, the banshee call culling any desire to move forward.

How many dead drunks do you know?

Got plenty numbers in my line that’ll never get picked.

Also know that most of them made a direct call to the Reaper while they had their heads on straight.

Funny thing, that.

How do people like me do it? How is it I’ve gotten this far without the bottle?

The answer is in the monologue.

I found a replacement.

Well, I’ve actually had several in my time;

coffee, cigarettes, running, sex, porn…

Each a little louder than the last.

Anything to get out of myself. Anything to not have to face the nakedness. Anything to not have to sit by my lonesome and brood over everything that made me… me.

Someone once asked me to try meditation.

Fuck that.

Fuck sitting down and focusing on the contents of my mind. That’s what I spend every conscious moment trying to run away from.

Read this book once…

Don’t like talking about the books I’ve read cause there’s gonna be an ass in the room that can’t help but correct my paraphrasing. Hope you’re not one of them.

Hope you’re not an ass.

The book’s called The Bible

and in it, it says

I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.

Tested in the furnace of affliction…

Still waiting on an ass to correct me. Still waiting on an ass to speak to me about linguistics and translations and all the stuff that doesn’t matter cause he’s running too.

Let me lean in close to tell you something about the addict that you’re never gonna read in the DSM or in hear in no goddamn philosophy or biology class;

the addict is man at his best.

Man hungry,

man driven,

man thriving for Valhalla,

for paradise,

for nirvana.

The addict knows there is no contentment in this life. That modernity, its comforts, does nothing but aid in the destruction of the divine.

The addict is trying to reclaim the sacred.

The issue is, you think you are, too.

And so does the hedge fund manager,

the lawyer,

and the pharmaceutical drug rep.

Everyone, but the addict, thinks they are doing what’s right for the world.

The addict knows that they are not of this world.

That they are vestiges of a time hidden deep in the earth.

A time destroyed by your cities,

your progress,

your productivity.

A time when man danced with God.

Look into the eyes of an addict.

You’d dare not.

Just like the judges before Moses after he spoke to the Lord, you look away. You cannot bear all the glory. You cannot stand the majesty.

And so,

you kick,

you spit,

your ostracize.

You sick fuck.

If only you knew.

If only you could see the whirlwind of a soul reaching for the unknown. The addict knows that all this… all this that we call the individual is a mystery that will never be solved.

A puzzle forever incomplete cause a two year old ate some pieces, threw some over the ledge, others hiding in the crevice of a sofa you tossed out years ago.

And that brings the addict to his knees.

Your arrogance,

your hubris,

your insolence

keeps you sane.

Keeps you calm before the screen consuming the news, Taylor Swift, Riley Reid…

Go on. Enjoy your drink in moderation. You are safe. So safe in fact, that God won’t make Himself known to you.

The addict,

he speaks in tongues,

the Holy Spirit, a shifting flame above his head.

He cries himself to sleep, stares blankly into space, searching for an answer.

He won’t find it here.

He won’t find it here.