Like Chooses Like

MY FIRST year and a half of sobriety had been rocky. I had needed a few days at a retreat to come to terms with my five-months-sober realization that years spent in mental hospitals might not have been necessary; that my diagnosis of chronic, paranoid schizophrenia (which led me to try to kill myself) could have been caused by a toxic psychosis--and the toxin was alcohol, which I had been consuming by the half gallon.