In Deep Water

On the morning of October 2, 1987, I phoned Alcoholics Anonymous because I had a sense of impending doom. If this was the good life, why was almost all of it downhill? Why was it full of strife, high levels of anxiety, and abject terror precipitated by so simple a thing as the ringing of the telephone? And why was I--who had been a rapidly rising man-about-town at age twenty --living from hand to mouth at age fifty? And why did Phyllis want to leave me. . . again!