Sometimes during the days of relentless therapy groups, I look around and think there's been a terrible mistake: That I've been put in the bottom class with the naughtiest boys and there's no way I can talk or spell my way out of it. But at other times, the things that happen in that circle of chairs move me so deeply, I think this is the best and most appropriate thing I have ever done.
We have weekly written work to hand in, and in the first three or four weeks had to write at least a paragraph (including ~feelings~) on thirty nine (39) examples from our past of the (mainly terrible) consequences of our drinking / drug use. Yesterday one of the guys - in his 50s, a former heroin user and dealer - was reading out his 'steps' and talked about his childhood love of sailing, fishing and "open seas"; and his once-tender relationship with the wife who divorced him in the 80s. Everyone in the circle, including the counsellors who must have seen so much, and men who have spent almost half their life in jail, were fighting back tears - at wasted lives and thrawted ambitions and broken hearts.
He said it was the first time he had thought about these things in years and was surprised to find emotions still there after decades of being avoided with drugs. Again, I felt glad that I have got here while I am still relatively young.
INFINITE JEST: Pages 725-752
- Wheelchair Assassin Marathe is in the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House! Two strands of the book coming together! Will we see more of this as I enter the final quarter of the book? Will it all start to make sense?
Powerful stuff....!
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