The Taste of Metal

I always related to Robert Downey, Jr. I remember more than 20 years ago we had a cute high school girl who came into our office in the afternoons and did our filing for us. She loved Robert Downey, Jr. She talked about him all the time, saw his movies, just loved, loved, loved him! She went to Cabo with her family for a vacation one year and when she came back someone told me to go ask her about her trip. When I asked why they told me that she had actually seen Robert Downey, Jr. there! I went to ask her, thinking that she would be walking on air, and she just answered disgustedly that yeah, she'd seen him. When I asked why she wasn't thrilled to death she told me about how unbelievably, disgustingly drunk he'd been the whole time. Stumbling, throwing up in the potted plants kind of drunk. She was so disappointed. I immediately felt a kinship with him. I was about a year sober at that time. Over the years I've watched him struggle and struggle and struggle. I've prayed for him more than a few times. I am happy and relieved to see that he's clean and sober and doing well. He said something once, in court, about his addiction to alcohol and drugs and I've always remembered it. He said that it was like he had a loaded gun in his mouth and he liked the taste of the metal. That really got to me, and I wasn't relating to our shared alcoholism. I felt like he'd summed up my relationship with food as perfectly as anyone ever could.