Alistair,
I stand atop your grave with a heavy heart. You were one of the few that I consider to be friends and you death caught me off guard.
Wh..what happened? Thirty years. Thirty years you had stayed sober. What on earth could have made you through all that away? A..and to overdose?
I want so very much to say that your death has been a disappointment. But it's not, is it? As addicts, we must live with the possibility of relapse at the front of our every waking moment. I am a friend, a detective, a blogger, and a scientist, but, above all I am an addict.
Triggers abound. With the life that I have chosen to lead, I am continually confronted with hauntings of my former life. You, however, worked in a bookstore. You performed plays. I find myself wondering if, in such a plebeian way of life, a monument to the success former addicts such as yourself could succumb to our disease… I wonder if, even after all my concerted efforts, that I will fall to the same fate.
I have my bouts of depression, as I believe that everyone does at times, but I do not want to die, Alistair. I'm sure you didn't either. I want to live. I want to continue working with Watson, developing her skills as a detective. I want to live to see her be happy. I want to live to grow into a renewed relationship with my brother and a strengthened relationship with others that I hold dear. Yet I know that the inevitability of death is always lurking at my door with a syringe full of heroin or a bag full of cocaine.
What if I can't handle it?