KEY POINTS:
Entering the Qantas Media Awards requires trawling through old columns, a distinctly unedifying task akin to someone reading aloud a letter, in your presence, that you've written them. Or, as Enoch Powell said, though he was referring to writing a diary every day, it is "like returning to one's own vomit".
Powell didn't have a pretty way with words, but the analogy suits a weekly columnist. We spend seven days with antennae honed for subjects of interest. We store these mental notes in our heads.
We try curing insomnia by mentally writing sentences in the dark of night. When we're full to pussy's bow, we vomit it out for the subeditors to knock into readable prose.
As if the revisit wasn't bad enough, we now must enter Qantas "online", a task which defeats me and will no doubt render my pathetic entries invalid. Since returning to journalism in 2005 I hadn't bothered trying for awards, an apathy which made my editor somewhat disgruntled.
So, in these financially pressed times when jobs are on the line, chalking up Brownie points is not unwise. Spies tell me my columns rack up legal bills, so struggling through 52 columns from last year seemed small effort to keep he-who-must-be-obeyed from culling mode.
But there is merit in being forced to read stuff you once wrote with all sincerity, because you find that occasionally you were totally wrong.
For example, early last year I wrote about Jesse Ryder's drunken abuse of nurses tending to his injured hand. Back then, New Zealand Cricket stated it would "wrap more support" around the Black Caps' bad boy. I opined Ryder should be booted out of the team; we should stop hand-wringing and being nice to losers.
But there be dragons. Last month Ryder went on the booze again with disastrous results - for him. He missed a team meeting, was fined and temporarily dropped from play. The photo of Ryder that day, on drinks duty, says it all. He looks sick, ashamed and defeated, suffering the humiliation of undertaking menial tasks in public. In one sense NZ Cricket management is still pussyfooting when it understates Ryder as having a drinking problem. He's an alcoholic, an addict.
It's a disease, and like any disease, Ryder will not recover without professional help. If Ryder was diabetic he'd be sent to a medical specialist. Alcohol addiction is no different.
Maybe NZ Cricket has already checked Ryder into a residential rehabilitation clinic. Today, sidelined for the season because of injury, he's more vulnerable than ever.
Captain Daniel Vettori was right to involve Ryder that bleak January day, despite management's misgivings. "He needs to be accountable for his actions," Vettori said. "Hopefully it's a wakeup call and we'll only get the good side of him from here on in."
If only beating addiction was as easy as missing a game of cricket. Everyone - Ryder's "mates" included - need to have it drummed into them that addiction is "a disease of more".
Addicts can't just have one drink, one puff, one little bet. Unlike us lucky ones who know when and how to stop, their brains are wired differently. It's not their fault, but they can do something about it.
Research from America has proved that some people - on average about 10 per cent of the population, depending on ethnicity - are genetically predisposed to addiction disease.
Further endangering that percentage is the environment they are raised in - abuse, neglect, stress are all external factors that can propel a latent addict into the jaws of hell.
And while it's very chi-chi to saunter in and out of rehab, the heroes of the rehabilitation journey - Alcoholics Anonymous - are largely ignored. Founded in 1935, the only requisite for joining is the desire to stop drinking.
AA is tough, honest and politically incorrect, right down to the introductions - "Hi, I'm John, and I'm an alcoholic" - no excuses, no blame-shifting, just an acceptance that a power greater than oneself must be embraced if the disease is to be beaten.
I'm blessed to not be an addict, but I have good friends who are, and I've accompanied them to meetings. It's a joy, not a depressing experience, to be in a roomful of people determined to make their own lives, and the lives of others, happier.
These are brave souls, and they could turn around the life of one of our best cricketers.
Ryder's seemingly effortless batting style is beautiful to watch, and if NZ Cricket want to continue to "wrap more support" around him, they should take a good look at the guiding mantra of all addicts, the Serenity Prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
