It's a different kind of sound when fire touches a crack rock. It's a sizzle, like frying bacon. As Jacob sat in the small bedroom he rented for the better part of a year, all he could hear was the sizzle of his half broken pipe. It had been five days since he relapsed. As he exhaled the thick white smoke he could feel the dopamine drowning the anxiety and depression away. Thirteenth months of sobriety down the drain. It was longer than his previous go around of nine months. But that was far from a consolation prize. And it was far from the goal that he set for himself of never getting high again. But he'd been down this road before. He knew exactly where it lead. And he knew that he was in trouble. He'd already lost his job at the machine shop where he worked for the past year, and this downward spiral was a familiar reality. He was 35 years old. For the past 14 years he'd been on a never ending carousel of crack usage and rehab centers. He never had more than 6 months of sobriety at any point in this time. But since moving to Cleveland almost three years ago he'd been able to find longer stretches of clean time. He had a sponsor, and a moderately sized support group. People who looked just like him, going through mostly the same challenges in life. Some of them maintained their sobriety for years, and some couldn't stay sober for more than a week. But five times a week they always met at the same church, at the same time. The 'chronic relapsers' would bring their problems to those who made it out of that cycle, the cycle of deliberately manufacturing their own misery. And those with more clean time would share their personal experiences coupled with references from the big book of A.A to provide practical solutions to these problems. That's how it worked. Newcomers had to be broken and humbled enough to be open and honest about the help that they themselves needed but did not possess. And old timers had to be armed with the facts about themselves in order to relate and be believable whenever they spoke about their disease. Community is the single most important aspect of any 12 step program. Community with others who struggle, community with a sponsor, and most importantly, community with a Higher Power of your own understanding. As Jacob looked around the small room he could feel the anxiety and depression creeping back into his consciousness. There were no other struggling addicts here with him. No sponsor. And no God. Only a bed, an air conditioner, and a small stone he picked up. He sized it up with his eyes, and inserted it into the half broken pipe. There was no help, just the sizzle.