"Normal" is getting up and not counting my pills in disbelief, trying to figure out who "stole" them from me. And then counting them again and again, endlessly, as if in counting them over again I would discover more than I thought there were.
"Normal" is not sitting in the pill mill doctor's filthy waiting room for 2 hours or more with the other 100 people standing up because there are no more seats in the filthy chairs, all the while listening the pounding music through the thin walls from the bar upstairs, staring into the other empty and hollow eye sockets of the others who are just like me and waiting to pay their $200 cash for a 5 minute visit to get their two week prescription and an appointment to come back and do this again.
"Normal" is not sitting in another pharmacy waiting area, hoping this pharmacy is not one of the forgotten ones who might catch me hopping from doctor to doctor and pharmacy to pharmacy to figure out where I am going to get my next pills.
"Normal" is not having to break up all the wine bottles so my neighbors won't see them spilling out of my trash can, or hauling them all away to some foreign dumpster so I can maintain the legitimate air of my "sobriety".
"Normal" is no longer waking up in the morning and counting this as "my first day".
Again.