Day 7: The first weekend

I mentioned the other day that it has taken me a long time to get here. One of the things I have done over that time, perhaps subconsciously, is to obsessively read and watch books and films about alcoholics, and in particular those who have gone through 'treatment' (and especially those who have come out the other side to become fabulously successful). Of course I've read Bukowski and Hemingway and all those unreformed geniuses but that is not helpful right now.

Maybe next to the 'Painful Lives' section in WH Smiths (this exists) there could be a shelf for 'Rehab Memoirs'. Oh God.

So, I've consumed Chick Lit:
I was won-over by this (Marian Keyes being the most acceptable chick lit author to Guardian readers). I particularly respected the fact that she allowed Rachel to have a 'relapse' after she came out of treatment, admitting that it's not one simple narrative of recovery.

Hollywood (28 Days with Sandra Bullock):

I hated this, partly because of Bullock's over-acting (see above) but mainly because the crucial, redemptive act in the film is for Sandra - after coming out of rehab - to dump her 'bad-influence' boyfriend who is MCNULTY FROM THE WIRE. NO! This is not what I want to see!

Moralising American Memoirs:
Blah. (I know I shouldn't judge but this reminded me of that bit in the West Wing when one of the characters (not Leo McGary) admits to President Bartlett that he's in AA and Barlett's like "So what, you drunk a few beers in college?")

British Journalist Memoirs:
I kind of had problems with this as I did not feel the author had significant alcohol problems until she started going out with a cocaine dealer - and all the chaos that entailed. Also, it was hard to shake the feeling that the book was written as much to further her journalistic career as for any genuine literary value (ahem). I dunno though.

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey:
This book affected me emotionally more than anything I have ever read and after I closed the last page, sometime last year, a few days into my last significant attempt to quit (I lasted a few weeks), I just sobbed and sobbed. A book written completely in first-person, present tense - which very hard to sustain. The quote below does not correspond to the ideas of AA, but nevertheless I love it:

"Addiction is a decision. An individual wants something, whatever that something is, and makes a decision to get it. Once they have it, they make a decision to take it. If they take it too often, that process of decision making gets out of control, and if it gets far out of control, it becomes an addiction. At that point the decision is a difficult one to make, but it is still a decision."

My Booky Wook by Russell Brand:
There are plenty of reasons to dislike Ol' Russ but I have been thoroughly charmed and captivated by him since I interviewed him six or seven years ago (although, to my regret, he did not try to womanize me). Below is one of the most eloquent descriptions of addiction I have ever heard:

"All of us, I think, have a vague idea that we're missing something. Some say that thing is God; that all the longing we feel - be it for a lover, or a football team, or a drug - is merely an inappropriate substitute for the longing we're supposed to feel for God, for oneness, for truth. And what heroin does really successfully is objectify that need."

And of course Infinite Jest, which while being partly about addiction and featuring a treatment centre, is about so much more.

[The one, key, text about all this that I have not read is the Alcoholics Anonymous 'Big Book', although it has been sitting beside my bed with its blue heft for months now. I think it reminds me too much of a bible.]

INFINITE JEST UPDATE: I sat in a Brick Lane coffee shop and read pages 49-60 feeling like a dickhead (slow progress but this book demands close reading). More about Hal Incandenza and the Enfield Tennis Academy, smoking pot ("Hal likes to get high in secret but the bigger secret is that he's as attached to the secrecy as he is to getting high"), some howling fantods and a forensically graphic description of a death following a bungled drugs robbery.

Oh and the beginning of the footnotes: You have to read this with two bookmarks - one to follow the main novel and one to keep track of the elaborate expositions at the back. Onwards.