I've got to stop listening to
The Connection! This used to be my favorite radio show,
back in the days when Chris Lydon was the host and they
talked about interesting stuff. Now it seems all they
talk about is depressing stuff. If it's not war, it's
recovery - the economic kind and the addiction kind.
Today's show on faith
based treatment programs depressed
me even more than yesterday's jobless
economic recovery show.
Ah, and here we hit the part where
I suddenly become even less able to write than I usually
am. "What about the show depressed you?" one might ask.
That would be the logical next paragraph, right? But can
I articulate it? Nope. It's partly a feeling of profound
discomfort with the whole subject and partly the way the
program's guests set up the whole discussion as a
12-steps vs. medical science debate and hardly even
addressed the alleged topic of the show, which had been
billed as a discussion of President Dubya's proposed
voucher program for faith based treatment programs.
Presumably the voucher thing doesn't apply to programs
with a tradition of voluntary contributions and
independence.
I guess in tuning into the show I
wanted to know what the faith based people do in their
meetings, how recovery by faith alone functions, what
kinds of programs the vouchers would be funding, how the
voucher program would work... not a discourse on the
faults and failings of recovery. Things were definitely
beginning to sound as bad as the economic recovery. What
exactly is recovery anyway?
Last night a guy in Central Square
told me a sob story about how he's from Georgia and is
stranded in Cambridge, a long way from home, and homeless
and hungry too. He asked for any money I could give him.
I reached into my pocket and grabbed a handful of change,
about $1.75, and handed it to him. He shook my hand and
said "God bless you." It was only as he turned to leave
that I smelled the alcohol on his breath. Is that why
he's hungry and homeless? There's a lot more to being
able to afford a place to live and hang onto it in this
economy than staying sober. What's recovery got to do
with that?
I've been in a kind of a bad mood
about the whole subject - of alcohol not faith based
treatment - lately because I've been experiencing some
pressure to attend a fundraising event that is pretty
much alcohol centered. It's a wine tasting, chocolate
tasting, and silent auction. The person who was
pressuring folks about it is so totally into wine and
cocktails and the whole drinking life style that she
really doesn't understand that anybody might feel
differently than she does. What kind of wine goes with
chocolate anyway? What's recovery got to do with
this?
So if I were actually a competent
writer, I could tie all these things together and throw
in my personal story to boot (sorry folks, you ain't
gettin' the story any time soon) and then relate it all
back to the economy. But since I'm not, I'll just say
that when I end up working in the bait shop on Bridge Rd.
for the duration of the jobless recovery I'll simply be a
sober productive member of society who works in a bait
shop instead of a sober productive member of society who
works in a high-tech startup.
Live bait is kind of icky
though...
