THE NEW YORKER ;

“People don’t like love, they like that flittery flirty feeling. They don’t love love - love is sacrificial, love is ferocious, it’s not emotive. Our culture doesn’t love love, it loves the idea of love. It wants the emotion without paying anything for it. It’s ridiculous.”

Addiction is rooted in fear, and self-loathing, and faithlessness. It is human doubt when doubt finally wins out. And here’s the rub: getting clean is the easy part. Getting clean is thirty days, at most. It’s step one and it’s certain, fixed. It’s step two that is epic: now that I’m not getting high, who the hell am I? And what am I here for? And, oh yeah, all those fears and doubts and hurts that drove me to addiction in the first place? They’re still here. I’m still who I was when I first learned how to lose myself in heroin, in cocaine, in alcohol, or whatever else was available to obliterate any sense of myself. So what do I do with this life now?