The Rooster

The Rooster

Rooster in Review: Anatomy of a Relapse

Due to a scheduling conflict we're combining the two regular Fiday dispatches into one.

D.J. Byrnes's avatar
D.J. Byrnes
Oct 17, 2025
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brown cigarette stick on blue surface
Photo by Elsa Olofsson on Unsplash

I relapsed on “intoxicating hemp” products roughly three weeks ago, if you can believe that.

It ruined over a year of total sobriety—my first year of that since I was 15 years old in 2001.

The nasty thing about addiction is that you’re a lot like the Queen of England against the IRA: You have to get lucky every day. Your…

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