This brief chapter is an excerpt from Cyrus Shams's manuscript, BOOKOFMARTYRS.docx, in which he reflects on the nature of addiction and recovery. Riffing on Tolstoy's famous opening to Anna Karenina, Cyrus argues that all addiction stories are essentially identical, while each path to sobriety is unique.

Cyrus describes his own descent into seeking help as undramatic. There was no spectacular rock bottom—no arrest, no car crash—just an ordinary morning of waking up drunk on the floor, taking a pull from a nearly empty bottle of Old Crow bourbon, finding his keys, and calmly driving himself to get help.

He reflects on how sobriety strips away the romantic self-image of the addict as a tragic, misunderstood figure. Addiction, he insists, is not glamorous but algorithmic: a drug works until it doesn't, dependence grows, and joy withers like a plant deprived of light. The clichéd anecdotes of using are only interesting to those who have never known real addicts. The real story, Cyrus concludes, is what comes after.