My traveling companions began to notice I was behaving oddly and asked what was wrong. I said I felt sick, maybe it was the flu or something, and I just had to go home.
But I knew in my heart it wasn't the flu. I knew instinctively that there was only one way to stop the nightmare that was occurring inside me. For the first time in my life, and I remember this as clearly as if it happened this morning, I needed a drink.
***
As soon as we got back into town, I ran to the Hurricanes bar on West Nile Street and pounded down three or four pints of lager very quickly. The sweating and shaking abated and I felt a little anxious but a lot better. In rehab, years later, I reread Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I equated that moment in Mrs. Henderson's car to the awful realization Henry Jekyll has when he grasps that he no longer needs the potion to transform into the monster, Edward Hyde.
He needs the potion to remain the ordinary Henry Jekyll.
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