"We're on parole, not parade."

I'm sorry for turning my blog into a roving YouTube session lately!
Anyway, indulgence begged ~ but this video is the straight dope right here. My heart has been a little wobbly in the quiet moments since my husband told me of Philip Seymour Hoffman's death.

I'm not interested in the sentimental track, the populist screeds or the sensational stuff, valid as they may be. (Poetry? egad) I'm as unfamiliar with heroin as I am with diesel mechanics, but twenty minutes of bliss for which all other pursuits are traded, eagerly, is a language I know.

As for Hoffman, living the majority of his adult life clean & sober was a triumph against evil. Addiction is a terminal disease, and once contracted it progresses until death. I'm chastened by my reaction to his overdose, since I'm too often saying, "In the end, I just want to die sober and be useful to another alcoholic." Something about his death has allowed me to see how presumptuous I've been to characterize success that way. Serenity exists only in the present tense, and it's the result of gratitude. Happy people have the same life circumstances as unhappy people. I have no idea what life will bring or how I'll respond to it. Should I be granted 23 years clean like the actor was, and die with a needle in my arm, well, Soli Deo gloria. It will never negate the reprieve God has granted, or the life that has allowed me to build. I can't envision anything more foreign than returning to active addiction --- but the truth remains that 35 out of 36 of us do.

This isn't to dismiss the horrific grief and pain of the families of addicts. Quite the opposite --- drugs irrevocably conquered Hoffman's body, yes. But the goodness, truth and beauty of two decades of freedom isn't tainted by the sting of death. Satan can deform, but never create.