My brain had adapted to the inhibitory effects of alcohol, and once the alcohol had been removed, it had entered a state of hyperactivity. The adaptation had become a maladaptation. That was all. There was nothing out there administering this suffering as a punishment. My only 'crime' had been knowing that this would happen and drinking anyways.

I had been a child playing in the street.

♥♥♥♥ wrote in his epilogue, "In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street."

There was no magical fate causing my suffering. Just the impersonal cruelty of causal law.

That was my only Nemesis . Perhaps one day, they will invent a substance which prevents the neuro-adaptation to alcohol, and we will be able to drink forever, like the Greek God Dionysus. We will drink and dance and laugh, and there will be no nightmares.

We will be made children again, and we will play forever on a street where there are no cars.

Until then, there will be suffering beyond belief.