Where's Hunter?

Recovery has a term for it. Euphoric recall. It's the moment when memory betrays you, when you don't just remember the high, you feel it again, faint but real enough to stir longing. A ghost of relief moving through your body, telling you maybe it wasn't all destruction. Maybe there was something there worth returning to.

I didn't experience much euphoric recall in early sobriety. What I experienced felt like the opposite. I don't know if there's a name for it. I call it dystopic recall.

Waking up into terror that wasn't even abstract fear, just weight. The full gravity of your life pressing on your chest the second consciousness returns. The realization that nothing disappeared overnight, that the problems and the consequences are still where you left them, that the world has been patiently waiting for you to come back into it.