Can be considered part of the Sixty Minutes verse

One Day At a Time

You thought for sure the cooking would be enough. You were certain that if you simply threw all of yourself into it, possibly even elevating it to an obsession, it could take the place of other things. But by the third day, you're bored again. It's not enough. It was never going to be enough. You need more and as your boredom returns, the pain returns right along with it.

You shiver leaving the apartment, even though it isn’t cold. It’s less about the weather and more like you’ve crossed over into something, passed through some invisible forcefield that separates good from evil. And you are evil. You must be. Because you’ve done all this before. The only difference is that this time, you know better. You know it’s wrong. And here you are, doing it anyway.

You find the guy standing in the usual spot, not a quarter mile from Wilson’s place, covertly peddling his wares. The Vikes he has on him are generic and practically expired, which makes sense, given the fact that he mainly deals meth and coke. But times are tough even for drug dealers and he’s more than happy to make the sale.

You at least wait until you’re home before popping two pills into your mouth. You go ahead and swallow them with a small glass of water, a habit borne from your seven week stint in the mental hospital. Within seconds of them making their way down your throat, you are already revisited by the familiar sting of regret.

A mere twenty minutes later, you watch the pills fall into the garbage disposal one by one. You run the water for several minutes, making sure they’re really gone. Because you know you’re not above dumpster diving for drugs. Then you take out your cell phone and dial Dr. Nolan’s number with shaky fingers.

You’re not nervous about talking to him, per se. You’re nervous because you did exactly what he said not to do. You screwed up before calling him. You screwed up instead of calling him first.

You hardly wait for him to speak, before rattling off your story. You figure the faster you get it out, the easier it will be. You were hurting, you explain. You were bored. The cooking wasn't enough. Wilson isn’t answering your calls. You just needed something, just a little something to take the edge off. And you only took two. That’s not so much, is it? It’s only twenty milligrams. It's not the end of the world.

But it counts as a slip and he tells you so. It doesn't matter how much you took. It matters that you took it.

“You didn’t want to be stopped,” he points out, and you know he’s right. You never even tried. You gave in too quickly. And you’re suddenly ashamed for letting him down. You’re ashamed of how easily you gave in.

You need more than he can offer. He’s ninety minutes away. You’re fifty years old and what you need is a sponsor, a keeper, a God damned babysitter. The sad thing is, you wouldn’t mind him following you around twenty-four hours a day, just to make sure you stayed clean.

“I screwed up,” you say softly, as though the confession alone can undo the deed. You wonder how you’re supposed to stay clean, when you can’t make it through one bad day without heading back to the Vicodin. You assume he must hate you, must think you’re pathetic, must be asking himself why he ever invested anything in you when you were only destined to fail. All this time you've told people that it was about the pain. But deep down you know that you need help, because you’d rather get high than just about anything else.

Except that Nolan isn't angry with you. He’s not angry at all. He reminds you that every day is new, that this battle you’re fighting is not all or nothing. It’s about taking things one second at a time, about not allowing failures to stop you from moving forward. You can try again tomorrow. You can say no tomorrow. You can stay sober tomorrow.

You'd be lying if you said you didn’t miss it, that well calculated descent into unconsciousness. Depending on your caseload (not that one case can really be considered a load) you would usually make it home by six. You'd start slow, a beer or two with dinner. By nine o’clock you'd have moved on to the harder stuff. Over time, the transition from weaker to stronger liquor came sooner and sooner, until you’d completely negated the beer altogether. It was bourbon and Vicodin with dinner and even more Vicodin for dessert.

You actually looked forward to it, the numbness, the deliberate disconnection from reality. Your life wasn’t exactly a cake walk. But once the booze and pills kicked in, you ceased to care. And that was perfect. It served its purpose. All throughout the day, amidst varying degrees of pain, what you‘d been longing to feel was nothing.

There's a shame that goes with it, the realization that you've become a slave to chemicals. It implies weakness of character. You never meant to end up this way, to get to this point. But it's like grabbing the tiger’s tail. You're safe, as long as you hang on. If you ever try to let go, you’re screwed.

You hate what you’d become, this pathetic junkie hiding behind his chronic pain, constantly asserting your medical need for the drugs. Deep down you know that you never tried that hard to find alternatives to managing your pain. You wonder what people are thinking of you, seeing you functioning on ibuprofen alone. If they didn’t know the truth before, they do now.

You're a brilliant diagnostician. Yet it completely escaped you that the Vicodin was making your pain worse, not better. You hate yourself for being decieved, for falling prey to something so simple. Except that Nolan doesn't judge you. He doesn't look at you and see just an addict. He sees a human being in pain. He doesn't condone your vices. But unlike so many other people in your life, he at least understands them. He tells you so. Then he tells you that he's proud of you for calling him at all.

Yeah, you miss it. You miss the high, the rush, the numbness. What you don't miss is the shame. You don't know what the future holds. But for some reason, he believes in you. And therefore you're pretty sure you can do this, if you just take it one day at a time.