h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hungover.

A threatening word.

Hungover what? An abyss seething with liquefied hopes? A chasm cleft between sanity and despair? A void of abandoned aspiration?

It is a mess of fear; real and imagined. I speak not of the Sunday morning throbber dispelled with Aspirin and fresh air, but of an abiding, unspecified angst, every nerve-end aquiver. The smallest sounds clangour in a brittle brain whose cells sizzle and burn. Immobility impossible, concentration a forgotten gift. Shot eyes daren't hold those of another human without the fierce courage distilled in a bottle. A sly cowardice grips and crushes the backbone you kid yourself still exists, and your body reneges. The knowledge of your fall is on the lips of friend and foe, while your own sullied lips drip the weasel words of false remorse.

Hungover. No-one left to drag you from the fearful edge. When, in rare lucidity, YOU are the only 'reality'; your's the only insight. Longing to caution others on the road to hell, knowing they will not heed; not you, who cannot halt your own slide into oblivion. So the grey turns to black, and the black shrouds any thought of escape from this fluid purgatory.

Hungover - nowhere to go, but down. No hope of rising until scraping the bottom. There, if you are among the lucky few, some dregs may remain of your former self. Some power enwraps and guides you, weary as you are, through these visions of awful night which assail you.

Make no mistake. The journey down is but a beginning. The road back is beset with traps. You knew it even as it happened. Friends, family, respect and reputation are no longer yours. Some - you may regain. The rest? Let it go. Forget it, if you can. The bleak horizon will brighten; the storm of past days settle to unquiet memory and you will move on; strong in the knowledge of weakness.
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