Entanglement

Everyone struggles, no one is unique in this regard. To what degree everyone struggles is what makes it relative. Fleeing a war torn nation, drinking from polluted rivers, starvation, slavery and false imprisonment are all struggles that most of us will never know firsthand, thank God. Tell those people that their struggle builds character.  Right now, a ten year old little girl struggles with hearing the words... I wish you were never  born ...a high school freshman struggles with being raped, but never tells anyone because she thinks it's her fault. There's a flight attendant afraid and struggling in New York because she's being beaten by her boyfriend, there's a housewife in suburbia with two babes in diapers whose husband is cheating on her and she is struggling with why, there's an exhausted woman living next door to you who regularly struggles to keep her drunken man from choking on his own vomit while he sleeps, and another stretched so thin that she struggl...

There is, perhaps, no other beverage so insidious as alcohol. I got cold chills upon hearing the ancient origin of the word, from Arabic, Al-khul , meaning body eating spirit. It was believed that alcohol would extract the essence of the soul, leaving the body vulnerable to low frequency entities, leading to a host of questionable, sometimes immoral behavior and eventual blackout. The Body Eating Spirit and I have a long, sordid history together. She has been as much a part of my life as breath. She's been locked away going on five years now—but that doesn't stop her from rattling the cage. I had my first drink when I was twelve. I wasn't a fan of the taste, but of the warmth that consumed my body from the inside out, I fell in love. The insecure, shy, awkward, scared, fragile little girl, the essence of my true self, was put in the corner every time I raised a glass. Drinking made me feel beautiful, sexy, confident, jovial, and free. I adopted the,  it's five o'cl...