Wandering from recovery

Recovering from any serious bender can become a major endeavor. I have known this for quite some time and still it never ceases to amaze me just how much work can be involved.

But a truly serious bender involves more than the typical physical recovery period. With the true deliberate freak out, there is required a designated time for readjustment to society.

The first step toward recovery is to realize what did not happen. In the case of my most recent trip to the east coast, there were no major injuries, no arrests, and no felonies committed. That's a damn fine start. So we know we can walk the streets without looking over our shoulders. It's highly unlikely that there is anyone lurking in the shadows waiting to get their revenge. It's still possible, just not that probably. So don't waste your time.

The second job is to find the sheer delight in the stories that will frighten teetotalers. Screw them anyway. Life is short and we need our vices. And if there were no felonies committed, then what's the problem. You may sacrifice a few tree limbs, question the promiscuity of absolute strangers, or even loudly declare the need for someone to have explicit encounters with a fist; but these are not things to be ashamed of. Be ashamed if you hold yourself back from madness. Be ashamed if you stand outside the boundaries and watch it all happen. Life is for living. Try telling the story from the outside and people will know - people will smell the fear in your soul.

So in the end my advice is to not readjust to society. Use your experience to pull others into your world. What we see in the papers and on the news is a farce, a perverted power struggle between evil and more evil. So find your fun and swim in it. And don't ever blame yourself for the fact that the meek cannot understand.