...for The First Time In My Life,

It Didn't Matter If I Got Bitten By A Dog Or I Ripped My Pants On The Fence Post Or I Poked Myself In The Eye With A Tree Branch That I Was Crawling Over, It Was All About The Shortcut. My Whole Life I Took The Shortcut, And I Ended Up Lost.

When I Was Younger, I Used To Hate Germany. I Hated The Country, The People, The Language, The Culture, Everything! But Over The Years I've Grown To Really Appreciate The German People.

There Was An Uncommon Array Of People In There [rehab] With Me, And I Became Friends With All Of Them. You Recognize The Possibility Of Your Own Demise In The Lives Of These Other People. You're Doing The Same Thing They Are, But You Can't See It In Yourself. However, You Start Seeing All Of These Tragedies And Potential Miracles In Other People. It's A Real Eye- And Heart-opening Situation.

I Had Seen These Transformations, People Who Had Lost Their Will To Live, Coming Back From Their Zombie States And Radiating A New Life Force From Their Eyes.

The Good News Is That By The Second Year, Those Cravings Were About As Half As Frequent, And By The Third Year, Half As Much Again. I'm Still A Little Bent, A Little Crooked, But All Things Crooked, I Can't Complain. After All Those Years Of All Kinds Of Abuse And Crashing Into Trees At Eighty Miles An Hour And Jumping Off Buildings And Living Through Overdoses And Liver Disease, I Feel Better Now Than I Did Ten Years Ago. I Might Have Some Scar Tissue, But That's Alright, I'm Still Making Progress.