Insanity. The word conjures different images for different people.
There's the rocking back and forth in your own filth while yodeling pig-latin variety; carving up a family and placing them in the freezer "Donner...Party of six!" type, as well as simply talking out loud to yourself-and answering, to name, according to the American Psychiatric Association, but a few.
There is also the definition of doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. That is the variety I am most at home with.(Talking to myself not withstanding.)
One would think that armed with the self knowledge that alcohol and drugs were a bad mix for me, I would leave them alone, as in, burn your hand on the stove, don't touch it again, kind of thing.
Not so much.
Self knowledge rarely availed me anything at all, except fodder for guilt when the dust began to settle.
My first revelation that I might be alcoholic came one freezing night in the army, when drunk and carrying a bottle of Jack Daniels across a frozen parade field at three a.m.
I slipped and fell, shattering the bottle and cutting my hand. I watched it, helpless, as it pooled amid the shards of broken glass. The amber liquid mixed with my blood, melting the ice in small, concise spots. I cried when I saw the broken bottle.
The revelation struck me right between the eye's...I was a drunk, and there wasn't anything I could do about it.
Did I stop? Like hell.
Later, after treatment and gaining all the self knowledge about the condition I could handle, one would surmise I would recoil from the stuff as if from a flame. Instead I ran to the stuff...expecting things this time, to be different. (found out there are many sharp edges in sobriety...booze rounded them off. If I had learned to dodge, just a little bit...)
Now, that's insane.
That being said, we can resume our adventure...
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