Day 23: Brother, we can do so much more together

Day nine in the Big Recovery House. 1.19pm. Curlew is in the carpark, smoking two cigarettes and drinking from three bottles of Coke, Diet Coke and sparkling water (trying to cut down).

It struck me a couple of days in that there are a lot of parallels between this treatment programme and my favourite telly show of the 00s. When I started there were ten of us - all hoping to the last the whole 12 weeks - but already one has walked (it was just too intense, he hadn't realised what he signed up for) and another has been evicted following a 'relapse' (rehab speak meaning he went out and got pissed). But today two new housemates were introduced. Will the viewers warm to these newcomers? What will their story arcs be?

But my feelings towards the 'characters' are developing in a different way to the ones of TV - where I usually begin by thinking they are all wankers but begin to warm after watching few well-edited conversations (before going back to thinking they are wankers again). I began this programme with an open mind, reckoning that despite our different backgrounds we were all there for the same reasons - to get clean and sober. But today I have getting frustrated at some of my housemates - I think some are perhaps there as a way of avoiding/working the prison/probation system, I am frustrated at the slow pace of some groups and limited / misused vocabularies ("objective" does not mean "angry"), frustrated that someone still has to read the words of the Serentity Prayer despite having to say it - I estimate - around 120 times in the last five weeks. I have never wanted to be a teacher and am having to ~learn~ some patience. [It strikes me here that I am using this blog as a way to vent at the end of the day. In general I feel positive about it all and I know I should be - I am - concentrating on my own behaviour].

Also, it is difficult not to be a little more wary of people after hearing about things they have done (violence, crime, cheating on wives) - despite knowing that these things happened when they were under the influence, and knowing that I have or could have done similar. I am still unwilling to think that addiction is completely a disease, or that it lessens or even absolves personal responsibility.

Despite these frustrations, the 'group bond' constantly referred to in Big Brother is still there. I know much more about and am closer to these people I have known for two weeks than others I worked with for years. Rather than being separated by desks, hiding behind computers, we spend four or five hours a day sitting in a circle, truly communicating with each other. I come home with their voices ringing in my head and able to conjour in my mind the nervous mannerisms and vocal tics that come up when it's their time to 'share' (rehab's 'diary room'): flattening the hair, touching the nostrils, "as it happens", "in one regard". I'm also frowing (not 'throwing') a few 'innits' into my speech. Innit.

Tearjerking scene for the day (the producers will definitely use this in the highlights show): One of the older housemates was talking about his family - from whom he has been estranged for more than a decade due to his chronic drunkeness. He said he has learned not to think about them too much and, when he goes to sleep, tells himself that he should not dream about them, one-by-one (son, daughter, wife). "But then I have no one to dream of".



INFINITE JEST: Pages 211-230.
- Hal's got hold of some incredibly potent drug DMZ (AKA Madame Psychosis). He "invites you to envision acid that has itself dropped acid"
- tennis-playing Siamese twins
- Page 223 has a chronology of "subsidized time" that would have been useful 200 pages ago, cheers DFW.
- I found out that, at 483,994 words, IJ is about six times the length of an average novel.