Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

by Anthony Bourdain

I’m extremely skeptical of the “language of addiction.” I never saw heroin or cocaine as “my illness.” I saw them as some very bad choices that I walked knowingly into. I fucked myself—and, eventually, had to work hard to get myself un-fucked. And I’m not going to tell you here how to live your life. I’m just saying, I guess, that I got very lucky. And luck is not a business model.

John F. Kennedy said something truly terrifying—guaranteed to make every parent’s blood run cold: “To have a child is to give fate a hostage.”

Which is where Alice really loses me—because, well, for me, as a New Yorker, however quaint the concept, homeland security is still about keeping suicidal mass murderers from flying planes into our fucking buildings. And organic school lunches might be more important to you than crime in the streets in Berkeley—but in the underfunded school systems of West Baltimore, I suspect, they feel differently.