In response to yesterday’s riff about the stone psycho who lives upstairs asking me twice “is that your cat?” and my reply being colored by a measured hostility and facetiousness, Glenn Kenny wrote the following: “It’s hilarious how Wells will pompously go on about how HIS ‘sobriety’ beats that of anyone who’s, say, been working a program for 20 years, and then spin out a shit fit of completely disproportionate rage if the wrong guy looks at him cross-eyed. ‘Sobriety” — I do not think that word means what you think it means.”

To which I replied: “You mean ‘sobriety’ is a term that represents some kind of illuminated or blissful or cosmically accepting satori state? And that the Council Elders in the non-drinking tribe get to assess your sobriety and give you reports about whether or not you’ve reached an ideal state as quantified by some rule book? That’s news to me. To me sobriety is a decision, a conviction, a journey, a way of life, a way to go that at least eliminates the weakness that comes from the poison. That aside a sober person is perfectly free to look an asshole or a psychopath in the eye and tell him that he/she is, no offense, a psychopath or an asshole. You don’t have to surrender your sobriety card if you do that. It’s cool and all. You can do that and go back to your book or your salad or the clothes you have in the dryer.”

I own my sobriety. I built it up from nothing and it’s mine. The Council Elders can say what they want, and they can also blow me.