"Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened."-Rumi (version by Coleman Barks). Poet and translator Chris Jansen thought he was doing pretty well. His versions of Rumi and Pablo Neruda won praise from writers and rock stars, but he was descending into the madness of his own personal opioid crisis. After destroying his relationships with friends and fellow writers, he decides it would be a good idea to start trading bitcoin and using darkweb drugs like fentanyl and heroin (along with enormous quantities of alcohol to manage his dopesickness). He plans a poetry reading in Minneapolis with the few friends he has left, hoping to redeem himself for his past bad behavior. Instead he gets very drunk and goes into opiate withdrawal. Can he ever return from the abyss of nihilism and drugs? Will he run away and start a new life? Will he make a lovely suicide? How does an atheist activist come to use words like 'higher power' and 'miracle' and 'gods'? With nothing left but a head full of poems and a heart full of sorrow, this serial follows his odyssey through the strange country of a mental hospital and ultimately...home.

Intro credit: Brother Timothy and WA Mozart
http://www.brothertimothy.net