[Dan]

Over my first weeks of sobriety Harry vaguely sponsored me. Not very successfully (he was far too deferential about my degrees, my big salary, my $10-words). But just drinking coffee with him was fun therapy. He was a repository of sagacious truth about drink, drinkers and drunks. You can never tell who will make it, he would say, having watched AA at work for three decades. Often the successes were the apparent deadbeats. The down-at-heels, bums, the ones who turned up still drunk and bleary. Those who looked like really good prospects - the bright-eyed, eager, clever ones - would most likely flame out. He was right. It was a lottery. Do not despair, as St Augustine said, one thief was saved: do not presume, one thief was damned. Which thief was I?

All of it.