Beginning With Fire
The Story of Addiction, Human Nature, and Evolution
Chapter Sketches
Chapter Six — Goodbye Sky
Alcohol gave me wings to fly, then it took away the sky.
There is a natural history of progression in addiction. We watch that process play out in vignettes from the lives of the quartet we met in Chapter One, stories from clients in my practice, and from my personal history. We find that the fulfillments central to the original enchantment are symmetrically betrayed; that each “promise” becomes its opposite. And finally, we see how, in late-stage progression, the imperative to maintain the addiction eventually becomes equal to, or greater than, the will to maintain physical survival.
