sobriety's like a hard-on — "they had a million of them…"

The old-timers' crude wisdom in its native register: sobriety compared to an erection you can't leave alone, the compulsion to tamper with the very thing you fought to get — and "they had a million of them," the endless supply of slogans that is itself part of the method. The doctrine delivered as barroom aphorism, cliché that works.