Free Dry: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs Page B

something in his ear. He cracks up and they head off down the hallway together, her arm around his waist, laughing. “I’ll see you downstairs,” he calls back to me.
    I think about what Dr. Valium just told me. “It’ll take a few days, but you’ll see. You’ll get it.”
    This is probably exactly what the Reverend Jim Jones said to his followers as he stirred the Kool-Aid.

    It’s called simply “Affirmations.” There’s a nighttime Affirmations and a morning Affirmations. I was lucky enough to miss the morning show.
    I’m sitting upstairs in the main room with all the other patients. Marion, the large woman who can only make eye contact with the carpeting, is obviously the “leader” of this group. She begins by asking out loud, “Who would like to volunteer to read tonight’s affirmation?”
    Kavi volunteers by leisurely raising his arm in the air and allowing his hand to flop back and forth at the wrist in a vague and affected fashion.
    I notice that he has changed into eveningwear. Gone is the tight white T-shirt. Now he’s wearing a black fishnet tank top and his long, springy chest hairs are sticking out through the wide weave. The hairs are strangely glossy, as though he has used conditioner on them. I think I even catch the perfumed scent of Finesse in the air. But it could just be a nasal hallucination.
    He reads from a heavily fingered paperback with a sunburst on the cover. “April fifth, taking a single footstep toward change.” As he reads the inspiring and motivational entry, I look at people’s feet. I notice that almost everyone is wearing the pale blue hospital slippers that came in my hospital welcome pack. I morbidly wonder if it’s possible that I will be so broken by this place that I, too, will wear the little booties. And then I’ll cry when they rip, sharing my pain with the others.
    Big Bobby keeps blinking his eyes really hard with what is some sort of nervous tick. Pregnant Paul stares out the window, but because it’s dark, I suspect he’s really watching the group reflected in the glass. The WASP has changed from a pinstripe shirt into a white oxford, as though he is on a cruise.
    After Kavi finishes reading the affirmation, Marion the Low-Esteem Leader says, “I guess I’ll begin the Grateful Statements. I’m grateful to be here tonight. . . . I’m grateful that I’m alive and feel loved . . . and I’m grateful for you, Augusten, for being here.”
    Oh, I really wish she hadn’t done that. I do not want more attention drawn to me . I mentally vanish from the room, Endora from Bewitched .
    Somebody else says, “Steve, I’m grateful you watered the plants while I was at ‘individual.’ And I’m grateful that I didn’t use today and I’m hopeful about tomorrow.”
    A few people sigh, heads nod in appreciation.
    The man with the cowboy hat from my group says, “I’m grateful to have you here too, Augusten. And I’m grateful to be here myself. I’d like to thank God for another chance. And say, one day at a time.”
    Dr. Valium smiles to himself and stares at the floor. Is he biting the inside of his cheek to halt a smile?
    And so it goes, that for fifteen minutes the patients express their gratitude to each other for such things as “saying hello to me in the hallway . . . sharing what you did in Group this afternoon . . . splitting your chocolate-chip cookie with me.”
    I can feel the artery on the left side of my head pulsing, moments away from bursting into an aneurysm. Whatever Librium was in my system has already been metabolized by my urban liver. My liver wastes no time. It’s the New York City cabdriver of livers. I’m thinking it can’t get any worse than this.
    But of course, then it absolutely does.
    “Okay, everybody, what time is it?” Marion asks playfully, leading everybody on.
    Two of the patients reach behind their chairs and retrieve two large, well-worn stuffed animals; one is a monkey, one is a blue kitten. They hug the dirty plush