• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1210 0

allow us to imagine what the normal World must be like and how normal people must live in it. Normal men would make plans with their friends to watch the fight. They would choose a location with room to sit down and a large television. They would show up. They would have some food and a few drinks before the fight began, and they would be able to stop drinking before they blacked out or became violent. They would have their favorite fighter. They would be able to talk and they would debate with each other about his strengths and weaknesses. They would be conscious enough to watch the fight, and they would cheer or groan depending on the outcome. When it was over they would go Home and they would be in a condition to walk or to drive, and if they were lucky, they would have a Wife to kiss or a sleeping Child to check, and they would go to bed. When they woke the next day, they would remember the night before, and they would continue with their life. Their normal, beautiful life.

Everyone here, male or female, Crackhead or Drunk or Junkie, rich or poor or black or white, would give everything we have ever had and everything we will ever have, if only we could be normal. Things like the fight, the silly, stupid, soon forgotten fight, would afford us the opportunity. We want to watch it. We would love to watch it. We would give anything to watch it, but the television here will not carry it. It requires a special cable system with a special box. The type available in the outside World.

We finish eating. We stand and we put our trays away. We walk to the Lecture and we sit in the back row. I look for Lilly she is not here. I wish she were so that I could watch her instead of listening to the Lecture. So I could look at her and let time fade away. So that she could look at me and I could feel the love I felt earlier. In her arms. In her eyes. In her words. I want it again.

A male Doctor wearing glasses and khakis and a white lab coat steps in front of the lectern and he starts speaking. The subject is the concept of cross-addiction. In the simplest terms, cross-addiction means that if you’re Addicted to one substance or means of behavior, a substance such as heroin or means of behavior like gambling, you are Addicted to all substances and means of behavior. Recovery from any of them means abstinence from all of them. If you use or do something other than your drug of choice or behavior of choice, you will most likely become addicted to it, and you will also most likely relapse back to the original addiction. The Doctor talks about being constantly and consistently self-aware in order to guard against the perils of cross-addiction. He says smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee are fine, because they are more habit than addiction, but beyond them, be careful how you eat, how you conduct yourself sexually, be careful not to gamble or spend too much money shopping, be careful of linking yourself to people who do these things, stay away from places where they are done, and be on constant alert. For the rest of your life. Constant alert.

Though fundamentally sound in theory, in its practical application, what this Doctor is saying is too absurd to be taken seriously. Any Idiot, especially an Addicted Idiot, knows that if you do drugs or drink when you’re trying to stay sober, even if that drug or drink is not your chemical of choice, then you are probably going to get hooked on it. Any Idiot, especially an Addicted Idiot, knows that once you cross the line from use to abuse, and from abuse to addiction, that you can’t go back and start over with something else. To suggest that having sex or eating is dangerous and should be monitored is ridiculous. To suggest that buying something or spending money will lead me back to smoking cocaine is fucking dumb. To state that I need to be on guard against all manner of potential addiction all the time everywhere I go for the rest of my life is pathetic. I won’t live that way. It is fucking pathetic.

The Lecture ends and the Patients clap. I stand and I follow the rest of the men out of the