Lately I have taken up the habit of stashing and and gurgling spirits incognito, namely away from my wife, on a quasi-daily basis. Ironically she remarked this afternoon how much more livelier I seem. If only she knew the cognitive and all-around wasteland this protracted rehabilitation has been for me. I feel with painful clarity that I wasted enough years of my life. I can get detoxed alright, but my problems are of a more structural, helpless kind (specially at my age, 30-ish) —an ever-warping knot of inhibitions, haunting memories and paranoid behaviour, an engulfing bitterness that reduces me to a rather catathonic state.
Of course I am aware I'm coasting off (hard) and inviting dire trouble, but for now I bask in the transient bliss this window allows as I clutch the bottle besides me, from the hollow of a trunk. The woods, a sunset, my dog, booze —as close to romanticism as I can get.