Alcohol.

The tangible benefit of alcohol is that it allows me to distance myself from how much I feel, which is too much. But since this act of distancing means never facing the problem, the cure is only temporary and makes sensation, when it returns, much worse. So what began years ago as a way of seizing euphorically on the moment, literally to make the moment present, has become the means by which I blunt emotion’s edge and hide a little longer from facing the poverty of my condition – which is simply that I’m alive, and drunk, and feeling sorry for myself.