I have developed a new obsession with silk pajamas, having bought a beautiful pair for $6.99 at Goodwill. Now, I have to look for more, because that’s what happens when you have a shopping disorder.

Today, I was patiently searching a rack at a gigantic thriftshop called Savers, when a woman standing next to me started to cry. I had noticed her earlier, registering that she was very short and looked disadvantaged somehow.

She looked at me and said through her tears, “My brother was killed in Vietnam.”

I tried to compute this, thinking, But that was a million years ago. I managed to say, “Oh no, what year did this happen?”

What a stupid question! I think I was trying to catch her in a lie. Still, she tried to remember. Sixty-something.

I then said, with all my heart, “I’m so sorry. It never gets better, does it?”

She agreed and we started to talk. I asked her brother’s name (Ricky) and showed her my locket where I keep Max’s hair.

She told me she had taken care of her mother for six years and said: “She died in my arms.”

I asked about her kids: One has stage 3 liver cancer and another needs therapy but her insurance won’t cover it.

We talked about how some days are worse and some are better. She confided that she goes to thrift-shops to distract herself from her sadness…I think she said something like, “so I don’t get depression.” I assured her that I do the same.

I told her to remember that she is loved and needed. She asked Max’s name so she could pray for him.

Wherever you go, a person standing next to you may be suffering, and isolated in the bubble of their grief. The act of comforting someone is more gratifying than a million pairs of silk pj’s.  Alleviating someone else’s pain is the best way to soothe your own.

For a little while, because of this encounter, I felt like a valuable human being. I didn’t find any pajamas but I did find a silk nightie for $2.99.

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Once upon a time, Max went to a residential rehab where we hoped he would finally be saved from his addiction. There, he was assigned a therapist who was working toward his MFT license.

Lawrence was a nice guy who genuinely liked Max very much. Who wouldn’t? Max liked Lawrence too, especially because he didn’t preach about god. In rehab, Max relapsed several times. It wasn’t going to be the magic ticket, I came to realize.

I visited often and soon became friends with R, a ‘spiritual adviser’ there. She was single and wondering if she’d ever meet someone nice. I suggested Lawrence, who she barely knew. R and Lawrence went out and fell in love, bam. They were soul-mates.

Lawrence left the rehab after falling out with the administration. He offered to see Max on the sly, a breach of the rules.

Max left rehab and got a job. But he was pretty shaky. Lawrence was seeing Max alone, and with us, his parents, for family therapy. We wanted to support Max any way we could, but I had my doubts about Lawrence. He didn’t seem to know what he was doing.

Max started using dope again and Lawrence kept his secret. One night a friend called to say that Max was in her living room, fucked up. We raced over to get him, our darling baby, and got him admitted to a rehab where he could detox.

That rehab was a bad mistake. They discharged him early, suffering from insomnia and withdrawal. Max called Lawrence that night but Lawrence didn’t call him back. In the early morning, Max jumped onto a busy highway.

Here’s the thing. For the next nine months that Max was alive, Lawrence offered to resume counseling him but didn’t try to direct him to a real doctor who knew how to treat depression. Lawrence was still trying to get his MFT.

At Max’s burial,  I hugged Lawrence and said, ‘I’m not mad at you.’ He replied, ‘I’m not mad at you either.’ He offered his business card to someone.

Time passed and R was one of my dearest friends. I could talk to her about anything, but not about Lawrence, who was now her husband.  I accepted this as the price of our friendship.

One night at my computer, I read something scary about the drug Neurontin. I knew that Lawrence took Neurontin and that he had suggested Max try it, too.

So I emailed Lawrence for the first time. I sent him a link to the study and wrote these words.

I came across an article about Neurontin in my email tonight. You should probably not be taking this drug, nor should you have urged Max to take it.

In the morning, I received an email from R:

you just sent an email that crushed Lawrence to the core. it was cruel. it was unnecessary.you also betrayed my trust.

i dont understand. You crossed the line with me. i ca’t trust you. what was the point of that? He does not deserve this.

Weve had this conversation before. what you set out to do you accomplished. You really hurt him and me by proxy.

 What ever he did he was only trying to help Max.

 Lawrence can never see or look at you again. That was just so cruel. I really wish you had not done that because it means we can not be friends. You are too dangerous.

 My husband is lying here tortutred. Good job.

R never spoke to me again, and blocked me from contacting her again. But before blocking me, she wrote this:

Max walked in the [rehab] broken very very broken, already.

Last week on the TV series Web Therapy, the worthless therapist character told someone defensively that her patients were ‘already damaged when they come to me.’ It was a funny line because no one would ever say such an awful stupid thing.

You know, I actually have mixed feelings about Chris Christie. On the one hand, he is a total cunt and a shameless lying pig who needs to go to jail. On the other hand, the daily tidbits about his various lapses of decency and ethics provide a welcome relief from the tragedy of Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I can’t handle the sadness. I can’t dwell on the horror and the loss. I need Chris Christie more than ever, and he is stepping up. He has come to the rescue with his idiotic critique of his own appointee’s high-school record, therein behaving like the vindictive middle school bully that we all suspected was the real Chris Christie.

What a fucking piece of shit this guy is. Funneling Hurricane Sandy money to political allies and rebuffing calls for oversight of this money is even more egregious than the bridge fiasco. Mishandling this money while Sandy victims wait in vain for someone to answer their questions ought to qualify Mr. Christie for a nice long jail term.

The thought of this cunt getting away with his arrogant abuse of power is too much to bear. But I’m grateful for his continuing malfeasance. The mere sight of him incites my wrath and indignation.  It’s the best, most reliable antidote to sorrow. May it never lose its power to distract us.

Who can stop me from buying this leather jacket?  I have at least five leather jackets but not this one.

Step Two: “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

I’m skipping Step One.

Admit that these shoes are perfect for me. They’re flat, they’re pointy, they’re an impractical color. They are screaming my name.

Plus, they’re on sale, reduced from $850 to $340! I would be saving $510!

But I know it’s wrong to spend $340 on shoes I don’t need. I never go anywhere and I have plenty of shoes. Not that these details have stopped me in the past.

I really want to get out my credit card but I also want to be a virtuous person instead of a greedy nitwit who curates stupid shoes. I’m trying to think of other things that $340 could buy. I could get a half-vial of Radiesse to plump up my face like a chipmunk, or half a chipmunk.

I could feed 5000 starving families in Africa. I could get a pair of eyeglasses that don’t leave a deep indentation on the bridge of my nose. I could pay my Nordstrom bill.

What better things could I do with $340? Please help me. I feel like a werewolf on a full moon.

I’m reading a book about addiction that Max read last year. He told me I might like it. I also remember him writing to his girlfriend that the book caused him to review his childhood, which he always thought was “pretty normal.”

The book, by Gabor Maté, a physician and psychiatrist, is extremely compassionate toward the addict. In fact, he explains at great length why the addict never really had a chance: Improper bonding during infancy harms the infant’s brain and sets him up for addiction.

Maté recounts study after study to underscore his thesis. When rats are removed from their mother for only one hour a day, their brains show damage. In human babies, this faulty bonding fucks everything up. The child is forever doomed to suffering and attempts to extinguish the suffering.

I can’t read too much of this book. Someone needs to do a study on my brain, to show how much harm the book has done.

Maté  ends the long chapter about the origins of the addict’s malformed brain by assuring us that he’s not saying it’s hopeless! People can be healed, he says, through the  indomitable Spirit that lives within all of us.

Meanwhile, I am compelled to look back in time and question everything. I remember loving my baby at first sight. I remember adoring his every expression, every gesture, every hair on his head. I remember nursing him for 14 months. I remember friends coming over just to admire him. I remember dressing him in his little outfits, reading to him, cuddling him, singing to him.

But I was a depressed mother. Depressed mothers ruin the brain as well. I forgot to say that. The baby picks up on the mother’s depression and is  irreparably  fucked.

I wish I could talk to Max about this. I want to know if he blames me. Or rather, if he forgives me.

His addiction must have been a nightmare for him. So much worse then the nightmare it was for us. It was such a long struggle. I never really felt it was my fault, until now.

My own mother hated me and told me so, but I didn’t want to become a drug addict. There was no comfort anywhere, from anyone, when I was a child. I have my problems but I never wanted to stick a needle in my arm. If everyone with an imperfect or depressed mother needs to escape their pain through opiates, who’s left?

I’m caught in this argument.   Depressed people don’t all become addicts. But my son did, and it’s my fault.

I wish it was nobody’s fault. I wish it was a wrong turn that led to more wrong turns. I wish he had been able to overcome his addiction and the pain that caused it. I wish I could comfort him and convince him that he was loved and he was perfect, addicted or not.

Mothers and children, what are your thoughts?

First of all, that Hermes lady is fucking nuts about her photos. She doesn’t want her photos used to mock her. They are there for praise only! They are there for gloating, not for you internet people to copy and ridicule. I found this picture on flickr, Hermes Lady, so relax.

I wasn’t able to force myself to go through 30something pages of her boasting about her Hermes purchases and the attendant ass-kissing. But I think I got the gist of it.

Here is the situation. Hermes is a symbol of wealth and success. Nothing more or less. A woman who spends a fortune at Hermes and then documents it online is a person desperately in need of love and self-esteem. There isn’t enough Hermes in the whole world to assure her of her intrinsic worth.   It’s a mug’s game.

Consumption at this level is very sad. All shopping is a defense against the knowledge of our mortality. It’s a stupid distraction that exists to enrich corporations and to numb the appetites of the soul.

Look in your closet and think about which outfits would make you happy if a family member died in a car crash. Look at your shoes and then look at this picture.

The Hermes Lady is a picture of insecurity, distorted by money and self-delusion. She is a waste of our time. Turn your eyes away from that lady and her ridiculous merchandise.

You already have everything you need to be happy.

Don’t worry about shoes or handbags. Listen to music, look at some art or have sex instead. You’ll thank me later.

“Today marks the official launch of  TheFix.com, a new content site aimed at recovering drug and alcohol users.”

I read that and imagined a nice scholarly-looking website filled with information and resources, like the sites about autism or migraines. Instead, it’s a garish tabloid-like bonanza of stupid features like “Worst Celebrity Meltdown” and “Hollywood’s Best Addict Performances.”

Courtney Love is one of the experts on hand to give advice, and there are articles on finding the perfect AA meeting and dating a crackhead.   There is even a BIG  photo of a syringe in an arm, to illustrate a story about vaccines. Are they insane? The whole thing looks like a great parody except for its breathtaking witlessness.

Please have a look and get back to me. Tell me your theory on how they got the seed money for this venture and what kind of advertisers will want to get in on this.

Meanwhile, they invite submissions and story ideas! I  could  never be part of such a shabby enterprise, especially knowing what I do about the horrors of drug addiction. But wouldn’t it be fun to propose some idiotic stories just to see if they bite? How about “Funniest excuse for for a relapse” or “How to flirt with an ER doctor?”

Fuckers.

Because it is my avocation to get mad and start arguments, when I came upon a photo of a woman sticking a needle in her arm, on tumblr, I wrote to the blogger and politely complained. I said the picture could be a trigger for recovering addicts, and that addiction should not be romanticized. She replied politely that she was against censorhip and couldn’t be responsible for triggers. I wrote to the blogger from whom she’d reblogged the photo. She replied  politely too,   but maintained that the photo was “social commentary.”

Both bloggers pointed out that heroin  addiction  is a part of life and that you can’t just show nice things. Both denied that the artful picture of an attractive woman shooting dope was in any way romanticizing addiction.

But wait! The “part of life” argument is kind of fatuous. Vomit, amputation,   and car accidents are part of life. All kinds of distressing things are part of life but you don’t see many arty picture of them. The image of an addict shooting up is a powerful one that has been  around  for a long time, and it doesn’t show the Part of Life that comes after it: The  abscesses, the arrests, the death, the funeral, the sobbing friends.

I resent these images, because they don’t tell the truth.   They are a siren song to young people, just as cigarette ads once were.

I know it’s too much to ask that everyone stop admiring nice black and white photos of addicts shooting dope. But I’d at least like everyone to admit that  these images are romantic.   They depict a “transgressive” act, nicely lit and composed, that represents  mavericky behavior…even rock and roll behavior, one might say.   OF COURSE it is  romanticizing  an illness that in real life is tragic, sordid, cruel and lamentable on every level!

It’s not art, any more than the images of bottled fetuses used by anti-choice groups is art. It’s the perpetuation of a stupid and dangerous myth.   Or maybe it is art, but it’s political, even if one insists otherwise.

I am not in favor of censorship. But I post images selectively.

What are your thoughts?

I confided to my psychiatrist that I’m obsessed  with  the nuclear reactor crisis in Japan and that I’ll be disappointed when they get it under control. I was shocked when he said he felt the same. “Of course.” he agreed, “We all crave this drama, it’s great. It lets us externalize all our feelings of anger and chaos.”   We both agreed that we weren’t actually hoping for something apocalyptic, although I am personally ready for the world to end.

A better way to distract myself has been tumblr, where I can scroll through images for hours.   I’ve learned to avoid the ones with the aggressively  teen-aged  nihilism: All those morbid photos of skinny kids with septum rings and animated gifs from horror films and topless hippies with guns in their mouths.

There is so much beauty out there. Visual stimulation excites some pleasure center in the brain, like eating chocolate or listening to an aria. Tonight my tumbler stopped working and it was horrifying to be cut off from my new addiction.   I have a lot of avoidance to accomplish. Max’s birthday is coming up at the end of the month.

Can we distract ourselves from everything serious with a focus on beauty products? I’ve always found them comforting, their promise of transforming us from ugly ducklings into  flawless  supermodels. Okay, so, what is your favorite beauty product that has surprised you by actually doing something good? I really want to know (remember: I’m desperate,)

My favorite product is Kate Sommerville Sunblock 55.   It’s light, greaseless, no fragrance, and leaves a dewy glow.   You don’t have to wear make up and you don’t have to get skin cancer.   I prosthelytize about it to  everyone.

Okay, what’s yours?