A Caveat About the Cosmopolitan

Dear Reader,
Ted appropriately wishes me to clarify something about his exceptional foray into the world of cocktails. He notes that the amount of alcohol he consumed that day in NYC represents about 20 percent of the total amount of alcohol he's swallowed in his entire life. He's not a teetotaler because he's in recovery, but because -- perhaps luckily for him -- he has never liked the taste of the stuff. This matters to him, and to me, because he does not want his decision to take that drink to be a sign that he was a jerk, numbing himself out in my moment of need. Also, he doesn't want a reader to think I enabled a dangerous experiment and a consequent fall from grace. On the contrary, he wanted to share the moment with me using my ritual of choice: one stiff drink. Since by nurture or DNA neither of us is particularly addictive, one round was more than enough to fulfill the liturgy. And our later, blissful ride with Rickshaw Harry provided the benediction.

We both understand what's at stake for our friends and loved ones who are, in fact, in recovery, and we want to be sure our experience in New York, and my telling of it, doesn't make light of their often monumental and awesome struggles.