A favorite passage

From “The Golden Orange” by Joseph Wambaugh, this is a passage I can relate to with exquisite agony, because my drinking days were just like this.

He had dubbed them “Fear” and “Remorse,” those winged apparitions, and imagined them as turkey buzzards, black ones with hooked bony beaks, and necks like Ronald Reagan. He’d learned at an A.A. meeting (which his lawyer had forced him to attend) that lots of drinkers had horrific night visitations not connected with d.t.’s. This, after the drinkers were jolted awake by a drop in blood sugar, or by withdrawal syndrome. The tormentors could take any gruesome form: bat, snake, rodent, spider, pit bull, lawyer. Often they appeared as ex-wives or husbands, parents, children living or dead—dead ones made memorable visits—or as Memories of Youth. And, of course, as Lost Promise. Winnie’s night sweats, all that dog-paddling in the flotsam and jetsam of life, were partly brought about by his fortieth birthday. The Death of Youth. // After the wake-up call Winnie’s buzzards took turns crawling all over his besotted steaming flesh—cackling, snuffling, growling. There was no point fighting them and lights didn’t scare them. It was usually the bigger one, Remorse, that did more damage. Winnie would close his eyes and feel the stinking smothering wings pinning him, while the bloody beak dipped into his palpitating heart.

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Cool. That’s a good one.