A Token of Returning

A long time ago, with eight or nine months in the Fellowship, slowly hacking my way toward sobriety, I awoke in the middle of the night experiencing an undeniable feeling of weight on my chest and shoulders as though an enormous blood pressure cuff enveloped them. I was alone and I was terrified. I got up and dressed, thought about shaving, thought about an old joke about wanting to be a pretty corpse, thought about my grandmother's admonition to wear clean underwear in case you were to become an accident victim, thought about what to do, and finally thought, My God, this is a heart attack.