I don’t remember much about the meeting – they’re all about the same, the same confessions, the same conversations, the same crap food and crap coffee – except a woman who got up near the beginning and talked. She was about my age, maybe a little older. She’d lost her daughter to social services because of her behavior. She’d hurt a lot of people, “more than I ever hurt myself,” she said. But she was sober now, today, and trying to put her life back together. She felt good, not in the immediate post-rehab euphoria, but in the longer, steadier satisfaction of being clean and clear, contributing instead of constantly taking. “I know you’re not supposed to say ‘I got this,’ ” she said. “I know you’re not supposed to say it, because the minute you think you’ve got this disease all put to bed, it comes right back. But I have to say, I feel good. Today. Today I’ve got this. I’ve been clean one hundred and eighty days today and I’ve never said it before, and maybe I won’t say it tomorrow. But today I can say it. I’ve got this.” She got a big applause and I clapped too, but I was thinking about Frank. Those were the words he said when I got out of the car. I hadn’t thought about it before.

I didn’t really buy into all the therapy and meetings and everything else they try to sell you about recovery. But Frank did. I suppose it’s easy to dismiss all the structure and support they offer; I had Frank to look out for me almost every minute of every day. If I felt like using again, he was right there. But, as I’ve said, I never really considered myself to be an addict. It’s not that I wasn’t tempted into going back to alcohol and drugs, but for me it was always an easy choice. It’s different for an addict. An addict has about as much control over their choices as a hemophiliac has control over a nosebleed.

“The world is a trap,” Frank liked to say, “and the better you understand how the trap is made, the better you can avoid it.” He liked to tell the people he helped that the world was designed to create addicts; they create a stressful environment and then insist you buy the relief from the stress, whether it’s alcohol, sex, TV, food, drugs, shopping. Binge watching, binge eating, binge shopping, all of it marketed and celebrated, and then denigrated for those who get addicted to it.