of mine 4-5 years ago. When I knew him he was one of the most intelligent and interesting people I had ever met. I had not seen him in 25 years, but I remembered that he had been a heavy alcoholic since he was 14 years old. When last we spoke he was living the bitch'n life. Women and money, money and pain. Multiple addictions, too.

Eventually, that string played out. He got a job for a few years as an electrician in Lakeland, but because he was a drunk he couldn’t keep a job for very long. He told me that for 8 years he slept on refrigerator box cardboard (extra thick & comfy) under a bridge in Miami. He survived by panhandling enough money for 2 quarts of Busch beer a day. I asked about food. He didn’t eat food anymore. He got all of his nutrition from the 2 quarts of Busch.

And then, after 8 years, salvation. He learned that a contractor in the Bahamas was in trouble, about to lose his ass on a job, and was hiring American electricians to come over for UP TO 6 WEEKS WORK and complete a project. The pay was $1000 a day, paid daily in cash, as no American electrician would work in the Bahamas on the promise of a payday 2 weeks away. If you are sleeping under a bridge that kind of money will turn your life around, so my friend showed up at the West Palm airport at the appointed time and was flown over to start the up-to-six-week gig. At a grand a day. I asked him “How long did you work for those guys?” He said “One day”. They paid him the thousand dollars, and he went to a bar and never left. He slept under beach houses to stay out of the rain, and stayed in the bar every day until the money was gone, not even saving enough to get back home.

After he bought that last beer he hitched a ride on a sailboat back to Florida. When the boat got close enough he jumped overboard and swam ashore, crawling out of the Atlantic on all fours. He made his way back to the bridge in Miami, found some refrigerator cardboard, and resumed his life. When I ran into him, about 4 years later, he had been living on 2 quarts of Busch a day all of that time. And he looked it. We talked for some hours. I listened to this story, and a few more. Eventually I said “You understand, Yes?, that without the beer every one of these stories has a different ending? My question only revealed my lack of insight. He had no frame of reference for the phrase “without the beer”. He had been a heavy alcoholic since he was 14 years old. He was then 56 years old. As he saw it, his real problem was not stopping. It was keeping going.