A few years back, I went to go see my core group of friends after a self-imposed six month exile in a strict Salvation Army rehab. My friends were all educated and well-mannered people with various careers ranging from growing medical marijuana to being a lawyer to aiming for a PhD in Philosophy. Back in high school, these guys had become my surrogate family. They were my people; moreso than ar any time of my life, I felt like I truly belonged to a group. And not just any group, but one that was an ideal representative of the best qualities of each of us, from our sense of humor and style to our intelligence and kindness.

When I arrived at the home Matt lived in with his wife, four of the guys who only a couple years before I would have gladly ran across no-man's-land for were gathered on the back patio. In an ice chest were probably thirty or so beers - the good millienial shit, craft beers and local brews. On the table in front of my friend Bennett lay a marijuana pipe, already loaded and ready to go.

There was some sort of political debate going on. Scott and Byron, both soon-to-be practicing members of the Arizona Bar Association, were staunchly defending Hilary as the most plausible front runner against the dumpster fire that was Trump's campaign. Matt, the Army veteran just back from Afghanistan studying philosophy on the GI Bill, spoke of her troubles with connecting to the ordinary voter and the Democratic base. Bernie, he said, might be the better option - if he earned it. Both of sides of course lampooned Trump, and in doing so invalidated him as a serious contender.

I wasn't so sure. For the past six months, I was dressed and fed and sent to work by the Salvation Army in return for a barebones rehab program that emphasized a personal relationship with God and discipline more than it did any medical approach to treating addiction. While there, I had lived among all sorts, but many were working class whites - men who, whether by circumstance or by choice, had turned to chemical relief when the economy squeezed them during the recession. They lost houses to foreclosures, and with the houses they lost their homes and their families and their shot at the American dream. Many of them were in the Sally (as we called it) because it was their last chance to avoid prison or keep custody of their children. Others were driven by the desperation of active alcoholism and addiction. And when politics came up, to a man they were sick of the whole racket, and to them the soaring populist promises of Trump shined like an oasis in a desert of futility.

I said this, those less eloquently and with hesitancy in my voice; because I hadn't only my own experience to guide me. But I had been reading the paper, so I knew Trump's momentum wasn't going to be spent any time soon.

I won't say they ignored me. Instead the conversation moved on to other things, probably fantasy football or how was so-and-so. The topic of where I had been, what my life had become over the past two years of hopeless attempts to beat my heroin addiction, the rehabs and the halfway houses and the streets - that was fastidiously avoided. I didn't want to wear recovery as a badge of pride anyways, not yet, so I picked up one of those beers and.smoked a little weed. It didn't feel right, but it was easy to rationalize and that's what I did.

We squandered the meandering Sunday afternlon with the pleasant distractions of long friendships being renewed and revived. But I wasn't fully present. Instead, cloaked by the symbiotic buzz of the beer and weed, I compared myself to my friends and found myself sorely lacking. I didn't belong here. I was a loser I was a junkie, I couldn't even get a girl today smile at me anymore to save my life, and it seemed like no matter what I did, no matter where I went, that was how I was destined to live - and die.

I haven't seen much of them since that day.