Historians have dealt with that conundrum differently – some recovering ordinary lives, others piling on descriptions of atrocities to spur moral outrage.
More than five years ago, D. said, some recovering addicts established their own share houses in the oceanside town, where card games have replaced drinking games and where there are evening A.A. meetings rather than a cocktail hour.
In my mind – and despite some recovering alcoholics insisting that their sobriety came as a result of a spiritual awakening – people often give up doing the things that harm them because they are too exhausted to continue.
He wrote about sex in the language of the addict, and, like some recovering addicts, he took an absolutist position: there is no middle ground on the question of lust; self-mastery is impossible; all men and women are fallen.
That was before an accident at Chappaquiddick in 1969, the death of the passenger in his car, Mary Jo Kopechne, and his own failure to explain what had happened, drew attention to his inability to cope in a crisis.That incident took some recovering from, both personally and politically.
The board heard presentations from three major nuclear companies on strategies for sorting out the components of nuclear waste: burying some, recovering others for use as fuel and putting some in reactors to be transformed into materials that are easier to handle.
