WC: Reality Is For People Who Can't Handle Drugs

I was one of those drug addicts who are actually medicating themselves for a mental health condition--in my case, depression. Now I've been clean and sober for 21.5 years, and sometimes, to be honest, I take it for granted.

But then something--or some things--happen/s, and I realize how far I've come. But it isn't always easy.

For instance, I went to the Museum of Modern Art on Friday to see the Georges Seurat drawings. As I wandered through the rooms, I found myself quickly overwhelmed. Seurat's dark conte-crayon works are bizarrely moving, despite having almost no detail. This is a man who doesn't care about faces--no portraits for him. Instead, out of the darkness of his drawings would appear, sometimes just barely, a shoulder, a veiled head, the shape of a dog or monkey--and emotions. I don't know how to explain it, but his work is evocative and beautiful--and sad I think. And I had to leave after half an hour.

When I was younger--and when I was on drugs--things didn't get in to my psyche. Or, if they did, neither they nor my psyche told me about it. But now things do get in. And some are beautiful. Art, beaches, sunsets, gray days, the people I love, a good book, a great symphony. And I am endlessly grateful to feel that beauty.

But with the good comes the bad. A ton of bad. The world is falling apart--have you heard? There are whirlpools of garbage in our oceans tens of miles in diameter. Our leftover plastic is poisoning the world. At this moment people are being tortured and murdered and . . . well, I'll spare you the list.

And many people I know are having a tough time. Cancer. Losing parents. Putting aged fathers in nursing homes. The many difficult challenges of life.

I think we humans must be incredibly brave or incredibly good at denial, because we mostly get out of bed, never knowing if we are facing a day of beauty or a day of pain.

And for this, I gave up drugs.