Hi yet again, James!  This is the last installment in the current series:

AH>  the writer thanked God for the addictions which had
AH>  enabled him to survive to a point where he no longer
AH>  needed them.

JB>  I guess, if a patient needs a shot to make it to the OR,
JB>  and (s)he is days away... (I'm working on the scenario.)


          In this case the guy had a seriously dysfunctional upbringing... or
so I gather.  Because he was agoraphobic, he may not have sought professional
help even after moving away from home.  He self-medicated in various ways for
awhile & then eventually joined a twelve-step program.  As you said somewhere
else in this series, whatever makes people feel better... even temporarily...
may be preferable in the long run to a mental/emotional breakdown or suicide.



JB>  The oddity - to me - with dads first diagnosis, was
JB>  beer is seething with B vitamins, but it shields the
JB>  B12 receptors.


          I'm not completely clear on the dynamics, but I understand brewer's
yeast is an excellent source of B vitamins.  IIRC alcohol interferes with the
absorption of B vitamins, however... and a deficiency of B12 may resemble (or
even cause) Alzheimer's, psychotic depression, or schizophrenia.  Since the B
vitamins work together, a lack of one might render the others less effective.
My mother's "dementia" improved in tandem with her nutrition,
anyway....  :-)



[re connecting names with faces]
JB>  Like me, learning about a grammatical nuance, or the
JB>  latest rule to when "I" before "E" except when it
JB>  follows a chicken crossing the road....


          That's cute!  With regard to spelling I might say "depending
on who we've borrowed it from & how well we may (or may not) have
managed to get our tongues around the pronunciation they'd have been using
at the time."  We all have our talents.  I do spelling & grammar. 
I take it you do Linux....  :-))



JB>  I'm pretty sure "Vas ist das" is a little wrong, as you
JB>  corrected it once, but I haven't the foggiest how.


          Okay.  This example pertains to German phonics... which you may
not have much call for in your everyday life!  In short, the German
language does not use the letter "v".  What native speakers of
German say when they spell a word beginning with a "w" sounds to
us like "v".  You typed the first word as you hear it, although
that's not quite the way they'd spell it.  Now you know about as much
German as I do.  I gave up on German when I got to lesson nine, which
consisted of twenty-five prepositions using three different cases.  ;-)



JB>  [...] he had been doing things detrimental to his health
JB>  for some time, like walking into a river in October, but
JB>  the glimmer of his formal self was more than endearing.


          I hear you.  I must point out, though, that a lot of allegedly
sane individuals walk into the ocean here on New Year's Day.  This event is
called the Polar Bear Swim, and it's been an annual tradition since 1920. 
The water temperature has been as low as 3ø C. & the number of
participants has been as high as 2,128.  I imagine it is safer with the
ambulance brigade nearby.  :-/



JB>  That rug was a choice the socially preoccupied self chose,
JB>  but the unencumbered didn't see a need for. The change
JB>  indicated something was going against his former self.


          Could be, but I still prefer the unencumbered self....  :-)



[re hair colouring]
JB>  My argument was that I earned every grey there.


          Me too.  I liked the Queen Mother's attitude when somebody wanted
to air-brush out her wrinkles & she said (basically) "Leave 'em
in... I've earned every one of 'em!"  I'm reminded also of a poem I
read many years ago, "When I am an old lady I shall wear purple."
 If you want to do your own thing why not do it now?  That way you can
establish a precedent before you get old....  ;-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+