FREEDOM?
The gates opened with a screech and I was out of the clinic, it's been over a month, the bright sun hit my eyes, I cringed. It was a month of hum of fluorescent light from rod like fixtures, and a detox mansion with hundreds of men, young and very young, who had derailed from the prescribed path of life, also humming. Heroin, phensidyl 'cough linctus', pethidine injection, mandrax, uppers, downers, snake venom, horse tranquilizers (I didn't know if they caused 'horse laitudes'), industrial glues – the drugs of choice of the times, alcoholism was deemed with a scoff of laughter, everyone was planning on drinking once out of the 'cage'. The doctors gave meds to soothe the shakes: the mind warpers preached the word of God. I floated in my misery of life, in thought, in an environment of forced alienation. Life is a 'four letter word'; the kids didn't know, the older kids were too messed up to realise. Brains boiled by hard drugs, most were unable realise the relief of booze, of course, till you cross the line. I clenched my teeth and swallowed all the rosy bullshit scenarios of life and made it out of the gates.
The sounds of traffic, the vendor selling peanuts from a wicker basket, the chatter of men with betel leaf chewing read lips at tea and cigarette joints, the cring cring of the rickshaws, the monster horn from a monster car with a diminutive driver venting anger, the siren from an ambulance, the thudding of piling work in progress – I wondered how easily one forgets the sounds of everyday life. Alcoholism or not, I felt happy to be out. Reminded me of Warren Zevon, he was still alive in 2000.
What is the big deal about sobriety? You are wide awake all the time, receptive to all emotions, whether you like them or not. The pain is more intense, failures are amplified, frustrations gnaw the flesh, unfulfilled desires eat the heart away.
What does one see in the clear light of sobriety? The ugliness in people? Hordes living and walking the streets like zombies, the death of conscience, and the hydra-headed greed of some? Oppression, nepotism, stark poverty? Over half the food of the world thrown away?
I am better of blinded by the fire-water flowing in the veins; love does not reign over us, it brings misery and does not soothe. Maybe someday it will and heaven will descend on earth.
Comments