A Well-disguised Blessing

WHEN WE STOP DRINKING, what a fascinating world we uncover! The mixed horrors and delights of discovering what we really are; that road back that at times is a road forward. The gradual lessening of remorse; the easing of despair as yet another day without the old prop passes in peace. The joy of intelligent conversation; the pleasure of reading a book the way the author intended it to be read. The delight, surely unsurpassed in human emotion, of wanting to be with people, of being interested in them and their doings, of seeing the soul of them shining from their eyes; the nice things we can suddenly do for them. The wonderful naiveté that begins to replace our former unhappy cynicism. The superiority of responding to stimulus intellectually instead of emotionally. The thrill of thinking before speaking and the way time sorts itself out each day.