I'm Afraid of Everything

Practical: That can be used; workable; useful; as, practical proposals.

And I think that I do myself a disservice if I try to go through life avoiding all fear whatsoever. I don't think that's very practical, attractive as the concept may be, and this from a practical guy. Fear can be immensely practical.

When I first got sober I kept doing things that I did when I was drinking and using, just sans the alcohol and drugs. One of my favorite activities was to get up early on Sunday morning, smoke a large amount of weed -- partly to dull the effects of my hangover and partly to enhance the experiences of the day -- and drive my poorly maintained sports car at high speeds on country roads. I tried this a couple of times sober, before concluding that it was dangerous.

"Man," I said, swabbing at the large circles of sweat around my armpits: "This is dangerous."

That's good fear.

I also used to find myself awash in bad fear, useless fear. I'd hear an ambulance in the distance and assume the worst. Someone I cared about would be 10 minutes late and I'd assume the worst. I'd sneeze and figure it was cancer. Someone else would sneeze and I figured they were going to infect me with cancer.

There's fear that something quite plausible might happen and there's the icky, yucky, free-floating anxiety based on nothing except twisted expectations.

I'm off to someplace warm now.