How Can Anyone Who Looks So Normal Be So Sick?

Some are sicker than others," the saying goes. In my twelve-plus years of sobriety I'd heard that phrase so often that I just took it for granted that I (and most likely everyone else I hung around with) knew who the truly sick ones were. They were the ones who'd lost everything: homes, families, health, employability, self-respect, zest for life, reasoning power--and even much of their natural, God-given intelligence.