i should have called it:

Writing Under the Influence: the Thrills, and Perils, of Theory

and perhaps made it clear that it was written from the p.o.v. of an addict in recovery

unlike your AA and NA types who are supposed to avoid the company of users, though, even though i'm clean now i can get a vicarious buzz off people who are still fiends

that reminds me: one of my fiend heros (ex this parish) is said to have said that deconstruction did more damage to him than the drink and the drugs ever did

further reminds me: this particular hero i first met at the xmas party of a magazine you'd probably associate with the utmost sobriety... which maybe explains why there were a fair few half-drunk wine bottles left at the end... we were the last to leave and said hero gathered up as many unfinished bottles as he could (a bottle neck between each finger of both hands, one clasped between each armpit, others wedged precariously into trouser and jacket pockets) and was last seen staggering up the Holloway Road clearly intent on continuing the party on his tod

i'd lump myself in with the autodidacts actually, because all my theory consumption was extracurricular and unsystematic... History, at Oxford then and most likely still, had no tolerance or application for Foucault, let alone the rest of the French lot... I'd actually applied to do Politics & Philosophy, a close shave all things considered given that they don't like the Continentals at all at Oxford... I'd probably have foundered in logic and AJ Ayers and possibly had a nervous breakdown and left after one term... as it is I specialised in America and learned lots of surprisingly-useful-later stuff about Reconstruction and the Populist movement...