Alone Again, Naturally

Isolate: To set apart from others; place alone; in medicine, to place (a patient with a contagious disease) apart from others to prevent the spread of infection.

I'm going to assume that Webster's is talking about minor conditions like the Black Death or bubonic plague when it mentions contagious diseases. Alcoholism laughs at the Black Death. It eats the Black Death for a bedtime snack. It cleans its teeth with the bones of those who have died from typhoid fever. Alcoholism thinks leprosy is a board game. The Four Hideous Horsemen won't hang out with alcoholism. They don't want to catch it. They know a disease when they see one.

Alcoholism is populated with people who are inexorably drawn to aloneness. We like to steal away and think. We like to turn things over in our minds. We figure stuff out. We come up with solutions. Unfortunately, the most egregious shit starts to make sense if we can just dedicate enough time alone to figuring it out.

This isolation can take many forms. The best kind, of course, is when we are actually all alone, but many of us have developed the ability to feel apart no matter what the circumstances are. We can be in a crowd of people and feel alone. Alone is a state of mind for an alcoholic. It's who we are.

This is why we have meetings. This is why the telephone exists.