Recovery Addict

From Artificial Reality

By Jeffrey Essmann

STAN M.:Hi... uh... my name's Stan, and I'm a recovering recovery addict.

You know, at first when George asked me to speak today, I didn't really wanna. I don't know why. I guess I'm still thinking of the old days, when speaking at a meeting meant making up a whole story... a whole new personality really.

It was pretty easy at first: I'd just tell a story I'd seen on TV or in the paper and add lots of booze or drugs or whatever. Like, for a while I subscribed to Soap Opera Digest. That was the greatest. But I think people started to get suspicious, especially when I got my sight back. But towards the end I was really scraping: I got stories from The Enquirer, Kenny Rogers records, Cliff's Notes. In fact, I had a real close call at an AA meeting once. Someone said my story reminded them a lot of A Tale of Two Cities.

It's just that I heard such incredible stories in those meetings that, I don't know, I guess I got competitive. And I think the hardest part about recovery really has been admitting how... boring my life really was. Also, recovery just seemed to be, well, sort of ...happening. Every time you opened the paper or turned on the TV someone else was comin' outta' Betty Ford or tellin' Conan what a junkie they used to be. And I did see some stars at the meetings; you'd be surprised. I mean, I can't say last names or anything, but ...

Cher..?