the highest price of sobriety
One of the highest prices of sobriety was not being able to keep from remembering things you didn’t want to remember
Context
The theme's account of what recovery costs, stated flat: the anesthetic the using provided was against the past as much as the present, and getting clean strips it off, so the buried childhood — the M.P., the flies, the mother on the floor — returns unbidden and cannot be refused. The bill for the drug is paid, in sobriety, in memory; the price of feeling anything at all is having to feel that.