Chapter 4: Spiraling Down

Nine days later, an agitated Peter was sitting opposite me. Just back from a trip to India, he seemed super-edgy.

I carefully tested the waters: “Peter, welcome back, how are you today?”

He was clearly not in the mood for any pleasantries: “Doc, here’s the thing, I have to tell you about a panic attack I had on my flight back from Mumbai yesterday. It scared the hell out of me, and I do not scare easily.”

He was sitting on the edge of his seat: “It started shortly after lift-off. All of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe. I tried to calm myself down, but the only thing I could think of was that there was no escape. I was stuck in a large, aluminum tube together with three hundred other passengers. I felt trapped, like an animal in a cage. ”

“Do you recall what started the anxiety attack?”

His body language showed real distress when replaying the event in his mind. 

He was leaning into me while he said: “A deep sense of foreboding simply came over me, Doc. Out of the blue, just like that. No external trigger whatsoever. We were steadily climbing to cruising altitude when this blind panic hit me. I even unbuckled my seat belt, as if leaving the plane was actually an option. A flight attendant had to tell me to sit back down and buckle up. She seemed alarmed at first and struck a commanding pose. But when she saw my anxiety, she changed into a gentle nurse. She was probably used to people panicking now and then.”

“You said it felt like you couldn't breathe. This sensation of suffocation, tell me about it, Peter.”

He held a hand to his chest: “My lungs did not seem to fill with air, no matter how deeply I tried to breathe. For a moment, I thought that the cabin air was low on oxygen. I was sure I would black out any minute, up there, in mid-air. But then I noticed that the people around me seemed fine, and the oxygen masks weren’t dropping or anything. So I quickly concluded that air quality could not be the problem. I closed my eyes and after a while, I succeeded in calming myself down.” 

“Peter, if you could face that raw panic again, right now, what would you see and feel?”

 

“For some reason, I see a dark blue hue, just a shade short of black. And it comes with an ice-cold feeling of not belonging, of no longer being welcome in this world. It feels uncanny, preternatural. As if something fundamentally wrong suddenly threatened my whole being. I became overwhelmed by an urgent and primal fear that could not be denied or overlooked.”

 

He grimaced and swallowed hard: “It is heard to put in words, Doc. I guess it felt like a deep kind of hopelessness, a feeling that all was lost. Just by telling you now, I get goosebumps all over again, on my arms and in my neck. As if death brushes by.”

 

There it was again, it had not taken him long to make the link with his simmering death anxiety. I said:  “Hmm, interesting choice of words, Peter. I strongly believe your bout of panic was brought on by what we discussed last time. Your fear of all things ending, of transiency. Coupled with an apparent lack of purpose in your life. Does that ring true?"

He was silent so I continued: "Could it be that yet another long-haul flight meant the clock was ticking, bringing you closer to the end? Could it be that you felt guilty for wasting precious time?”

He stood up and started pacing back and forth in my office: “Not sure, Doc, I can only say that the sensation was so frightening that, as a reflex, I asked the hostess for a Gin & Tonic to calm my nerves. Once I realized what I had done, it took all my resolve to correct myself and to ask for just a glass of water, and some aspirin.”

I could not believe what I had just heard. I wanted him to see that this really was a milestone so I said: “Trapped on a plane over the Atlantic, in the midst of a severe panic attack. You only had to keep silent, and a caring cabin attendant would have brought you the alcoholic drink you had ordered to take away your fear. Do you know how amazing it is, Peter, that you turned around and resisted that deep urge?”

Peter tried to suppress a smile when it dawned on him that, indeed this had not been a small feat: “It sure was the closest I came to drinking since I left the safety of rehab. You are right, Doc, I did not take the bait. Something really strong held me back, a heartfelt commitment to stay sober. I should take some pride in that, I guess. But at the same time, I have mixed feelings about the whole incident.”

I absolutely wanted to boost his confidence: “Not only pride, Peter. Also, reassurance that your sobriety is getting robust enough to withstand a serious breach of your equanimity, like the one you just experienced on the plane. You showed real stamina.”

He still could not unconditionally accept this as progress:“OK, Doc, but I need to prevent these panic attacks from happening again. My job requires me to commute continuously between Europe and Asia and the last thing I can afford now is fear of flying. My bosses would simply not understand. ”

“I am sure the problem is not the flying, Peter, you have been doing that, all of your adult life."

I wanted him to listen carefully so I paused before I said: "No, I believe you need to find peace with what you aptly called the groundlessness of life. There are many people who find the lack of foundation, the chimerical nature of existence, hard to bear. Again, you are not alone in this. Many talk about living in a dream, or being on a rollercoaster ride when describing the experience of life. The sense that anything can happen, that there is no certainty, no closure also.”

Peter sat back down and said: “That's right Doc. I sometimes have trouble distinguishing between things that really happened as opposed to something I dreamed or even just imagined. The day after, there doesn’t seem to be a great difference between the memory of a fact, a fantasy or a dream. They all seem equally evanescent. What’s gone, is gone.”

I was amazed, yet once again, by his apparent need to overthink everything: “Peter, life seems an elaborate illusion at times. And some of us feel as having arrived here by fluke. By mistake, rather than, you know, by design.  But the fact that you are here today, talking to me about this, means that you are ready to see your own existence as absolutely fundamental. Try to see that you are life itself, Peter, you are the deep-down essence of all that is. You do not need to look outside yourself for meaning, you are it. And you have both the ability and the freedom to live a meaningful life.”

I waited for a minute, while Peter processed what I had said. I had to confront him with his cerebral approach: “It strikes me, that you are still very much identified with your mind. You believe you are the sum total of your thoughts and emotions, do you not?”

“What else would I be then? My thoughts and feelings make me what I am, no?”

“Peter, your mind has been conditioned by your past, by everything that happened to you since you were a little child. By what your parents and teachers told you. And let us not forget the church, since you mentioned you went to school at a Jesuit college, right?”

“Right, and that is why I now hate god. They ruined him for me.”

I could relate to this, as I had many patients with the same disgust for dogma-thinking: “It is justified to be angry, Peter. Their brand of so-called religion has nothing to do with true spiritualism, it is nothing but pure doctrine."

"But do you see my point, about you not equaling your mind? Your ego is just an outer shell, constructed to cope with the external world and its challenges as you perceive them. There is so much more to you than your persona.”

Peter looked like he needed more time for this, so I decided to leave it at that, for now.

“Tell me this, Peter, after you had written the story about Connie, you said that writing enabled you to reach into a pool of consciousness, go below your thoughts and emotions. Well, I strongly believe that writing to you is a forceful gateway to your spiritual dimension. Like singing or painting can be an artists’ door to the soul. Next time you find yourself in a plane, and you feel in danger of losing it, just start writing. Let your life force, your sparkle, take you higher, make you soar above the clouds so to say.”

He seemed to find new energy when thinking of his rediscovered passion for writing: 

“Doc, yes, like that story I wrote about the death of my mother, it felt like a secret valve finally opened and all these bottled-up emotions could escape. The release was enormous. I felt liberated like I finally could let go of my mother’s hand.”

“I am glad you bring that up, Peter. That story was multi-layered and full of overtone. It was about your mother, about death, but also so much more than that. I had not been aware you had lost a brother, by the same name.”

“Since he died before I was born, technically I did not really lose him. And yet, all my life, I have been aware that I have been replacing him at some level. But only now, by writing that story, did it become explicit, out in the open. And I guess I am ok with it now."

I hoped he realized how valuable all this was. Finally, he could mourn for his brother and his mother. During his drinking days, real mourning had been impossible. But I wanted to loop back to the writing: “You know, Peter, I encourage you to let your creative spirit roam free when you write your next story. Do not feel confined to one storyline, dare to associate freely. The strict boundaries you set yourself in daily life, they seem to all fall away when you write. Can you see it is your real self, directly dictating the words to you, rather than your ego?”

He answered uneasily: “Doc, I understand what you are trying to do and I am grateful that you are trying to inspire me, I really am. But I have to stop you, as I have the feeling we are not quite there yet. Like I said earlier, I have these dark thoughts. I feel I need to come clean with you about a destructive side of me.”

We could make some real progress here, so I tried to set him at ease: “Peter, you can tell me everything, this is a safe place, remember. It is ok to take risks.”

He looked down at the floor while speaking as if suddenly deeply ashamed: “Doc, the three years before I finally had myself committed into rehab, well, that stretch of time was absolute hell for myself but also for my family. I got totally lost. I did things I deeply regret now. I descended into a bottomless pit over the course of those thirty-six terrible months.”

“What started that descent, Peter? What changed?”

“All these years of drinking, all the way back since my college days, I had the illusion of keeping the beast under control by counting my daily intake of alcohol. I counted the bottles of beer, sometimes glasses of wine. I did not do the stronger stuff."

I nodded him to go on.

"That daily number of units increased steadily over the years, but I never lost count. Every night, when I went to bed, I knew exactly what I had consumed. Obviously, I was growing increasingly worried, and I made countless resolutions to wind it down. But as long as I knew exactly how many units each day, it seemed to me, in my warped thinking, that I still go back to normal, That I had not reached a point of no return. I could just dial back the daily count.”

This, of course, was very typical for the addictive mind and I felt sorry for Peter that he thought he was an exception: “Nothing to be ashamed of, Peter. The mind of an alcoholic can be extremely resourceful, as we both know too well. So what happened, what made you really go all out?”

“I remember it was the winter I became very worried about my son, Wolf. He was sixteen back then and he had been experimenting with cannabis. His school work had been deteriorating fast and he started to hang out with the wrong type of friends. I felt very guilty because it was abundantly clear that I had no hold over him. Whenever I told him to straighten out, he just answered that I was drinking way too much myself and therefore who was I to speak. I had no authority whatsoever over him. It was frustrating like hell.”

Not at all surprised by this, I said: “That was some harsh and opportunistic logic on Wolf’s part, but of course understandable from where he was standing. Those words must have shaken you up?”

“I felt terrible. And my wife Helen, of course, resented me even more than before for my drinking, because now it had direct repercussions on our son’s future. I remember thinking: I need to stop, I absolutely need to stop now.”

“But you didn’t?”

“Doc, I swear to you, I could not. I just was not capable. Every time I stopped for a mere couple of hours, the immediate shock of withdrawal was so bad it made me lunge for a drink. I felt totally crestfallen. And strangely enough, that frustrating episode with my son made me let go of my golden rule of counting daily units.”

“So the hard confrontation with Wolf’s telling you to drink less had the reverse effect. Rather than forcing you to stop, it triggered a full-blown alcoholic spiraling down?”

Peter’s face showed anguish: “Hard to admit this, Doc, but yes, I completely lost it. I stopped counting. I started pouring wine as if it was the source of eternal life, like an elixir. When one bottle was finished, I opened the next one. No boundaries left.”

He took a sip from his glass of water as if, even now, the simple act of drinking was still important to calm him down. 

“It went downhill from there for thirty-six months, Doc. Finally, I came to a point where I seriously considered killing myself. I was well on my way of drinking myself to death, anyway. The thought of simply getting it over with, driving my car into a tree or buying a gun and pulling the trigger became increasingly appealing. I often came in places, like, you know, Russia, where it was a possibility to buy a gun.”

I touched his arm gently: “Go on, Peter, get it out of you.”

“Barely able to keep the focus on my job, I found myself in Moscow on business. This was early December 2012, and it was freezing cold over there. Was it a real business reason that made me decide to go to that place or was it fate? I still do not know."

He paused and then said: "The fact is, at some point during that week, I went into a Russian bank on Mira Prospect near my hotel, and exchanged two thousand five hundred Euros into Rubles. That very same evening, I had a shady local business associate take me to a local bar known for its black market dealings in hand guns and other contraband. I still remember the bar's name -  Crazy Daisy - infamous for the many beautiful girls dancing on the bar."

"I never felt so desperate in my life as when I sat down on that bar stool and ordered a vodka."

The twist of events in his story terrified me. The idea that a smart, brushed-off business man like him could go to a dark mafia bar in one of the most dangerous cities in the world, proved once more that alcohol drives us to do crazy things. 

I tried not to show my apprehension: “Peter, you show real courage in telling me this. This is a side of you that you are, maybe, not too proud of. What happened?”

“I finally got the gun in exchange for the cash, and I took it back to my hotel room.”

I gasped for breath. The thought of him with a weapon, alone in a hotel room in the Russian capital, sent shivers down my spine.

He spoke in an emotionless voice: “I did not switch on the light in my room. I loaded the gun and placed it on the bed. Then I took a seat near the window. I remember staring intermittently outside into the night sky and at the gun. Contemplating living or dying.”

He took a deep breath and continued: “I just sat there in the dark, slowly drinking cheap Russian wine I had picked up on my way back to the hotel. I remember it was vile and it took me hours to finish that bottle, while normally I had to slow myself down.”

I kept my quiet. The moment felt so sacred, so vulnerable that words could only do harm.

“At some point much later, I watched the sun come up above the Moscow church roofs. I suddenly realized I held the gun in my hand."

He looked straight at me: "Doc, I never felt so alone and scared in my life as in that instant. I felt I had no way out. Or better, I felt there was just one way out and that was to use the gun. I actually raised it and tried to point it straight at my face. I held it with my two hands and I was shaking heavily."

"And then something changed.”

I did not speak but nodded that he could tell me.

“Deep inside, I felt this was wrong. I did not hear a voice from above or anything like that. I just profoundly and emotionally knew this was not the way to go. That was all I needed. I felt an incredible relief when I lowered the gun.”

Exhaling the breath I had held in, I said: “Pff, sounds to me that was your rock bottom moment right there, Peter. Much darker even than the night you had no choice but to go down and drink in the kitchen at 3 am. It seems to me this was a real collapse of the ego, a cathartic moment. You came clean with yourself right there. What did you do?”

Peter: “I took the bullets out, I wrapped the gun in a paper bag with the empty bottle of wine, and placed it in the garbage disposal outside the hotel. Then I went and rebooked myself on the first flight home.”

“You never told your wife this?”

“No, I do not want her to know that I am capable of going to those extremes.”

I had to come to his defense as he himself did not: “But you did not pull the trigger, Peter. In the depths of your despair, you chose to live.”

“That is correct, Doc. After I had put down the gun, the whole episode started to feel like a purge. The mortal fear I had felt when trying to turn the gun on myself gave me real momentum. I just knew I had to propel myself into recovery, not wait any longer for any positive emotions to carry me forward. Procrastination was no longer an option, that point had passed. I just had to do it. So I turned around and booked myself into rehab.”

Peter chuckled when he said: “You want to hear something funny, Doc? Do you know what I came up with?”

Matching his lighter tone with my own, I said: “Sure, Peter. Funny is good, we deserve some funny, at this point.”

“A while before the Moscow thing, I had read a story about a comfortable but effective detox at a luxury retreat on Curacao, the island where the affluent go to kick the habit in the comfort of good food, the Caribbean sun, and the best shrinks money can buy. So I went ahead and booked myself for a four-week treatment at the Jellinek Retreat, in the paradise of rehabs.”

“Something in your tone tells me that this was not the best choice of cure, Peter. Which is why, probably, it was the first one in a series of rehabs.”

Peter looked up at the clock and saw that the hour was up: “Very true, Doc. But the place made me come to some important conclusions about the rest of my life.”

 

Angst By Peter Baer

Christmas Day 2012.  I find myself swimming in the Caribbean Sea, an hour before dusk. I am wondering what will happen if it gets completely dark. I am pretty far out and nobody knows where I am.

Where I am is on Curacao, for a 30-day rehab at the Jellinek Retreat, a first serious attempt at sobriety. This is typical of me, this coming to an exotic place to get sober. Believing that the tropical sun can take the pain away, looking for the path of least resistance. Paying a lot of money so the extra guilt will propel me forward. 

I am 276 hours sober now. But I am the only one counting. My fight, my demons.

The water is surprisingly warm, causing sensory confusion in my brain which is absurdly visualizing a white Christmas.

While I am putting an ever wider distance between myself and the beach, it occurs to me that it is completely up to me whether I continue swimming to open sea or not. Nobody will tell me to turn around and swim back to shore. It makes me weary to think of this complete freedom to either live or die. I feel utterly alone and groundless, literally as well as metaphorically. Am I really unobserved? Is there nobody to stop me? 

I did not create myself, yet I am stuck with me. If I am part of the universe, why does it not care? 

I shiver despite the warmness of the water.

For some reason, I see Edvard Munch’s The Scream in my mind, the iconic painting of the hopeless figure grasping its cheeks in dread along a Norwegian fiord. I am guessing this pops up now because on the plane over, I read in the Wall Street Journal  that the painting has just been sold for 100M$ at Sotheby’s in London. While swimming, I get an image of a 15-year old me, looking at that painting for the very first time in art class, being explained by the teacher that it depicts existential fear. I remember her using the German word Angst to describe the emotion of the character in the picture. The younger me listening, fascinated both with that word and the art. I remember that evening looking up the word Angst and wondering what ‘intense inner turmoil’ meant really.

I know my own mind, nothing is ever a coincidence. Angst perfectly describes the loneliness and frailty I feel here in the ocean. I feel more self-conscious than I want to be. I picture myself in a Google Maps kind of way, a small red dot in a vast blue body of water. A mortal creature in a brutal cosmos.

Not a new feeling. Since I was a boy, I have always been more aware of the absurdity of it all, like I was missing a basic map of the land. Surely there must be a point to all this? And that point cannot be my swimming on and then drowning? All my life, I have been waiting for an outside power to give me purpose. I have been roaming around, circling in a holding pattern above my life, looking down and observing myself. Counting down for real life to begin.

Like a shipwrecked person, I am looking for something to hold on to. My mind’s eye sees a raft. If I have not come imprinted with the right Operating System, I can build one myself. I can create an essence out of my own existence. I realize that how I solve my inborn desire for meaning directly affects the quality of my life. I suddenly feel I am back in control. I will aim high, I will aim for the meaning of my life.

 

I feel a sudden exhilaration with this new insight, a surge of power from a center that was hidden and off-limits until this very moment.

I decide to swim back to shore. It does not end here, not today.

Author's Note

NEW version uploaded.

Reviews

[Shannon]

I haven't read in a while and did not see the old version of this chapter. That being said, I think that you are finding a better balance. The dialogue is more engaging and we'll rounded. The story at the end a revelation, and not too much of it is given away in the proceeding dialogue.

For me, this chapter, as written, seems to represent growth for you, as a writer, too.

[Ruth]

I do admire the skill of your articulation Philip :) I read your stories and go away thinking about them, absorbing them. I look forward to when I can grab time to read one of your chapters :)

[Serge Wlodarski]

In America you can get a cheap gun for $35 but I recommend spending a little more on a Smith and Wesson.

Peter is one of those people waiting for someone else to tell him what the rules are. Hopefully he will figure out it's up to him to decide on the rules.

[Philip Muls]

Thanks Serge. Do you find these chapters can hold your attention?

[Serge Wlodarski]

Yes. You have done a good job of setting the stage for the story. Now you need to take it in some unexpected direction.

[Philip Muls]

Yes, you are right. Thanks.

[KT-B]

Excellent work I am really enjoying this story, the dialogue flows well and tells the story brilliantly - can't wait to read the next chapter, :)

[Philip Muls]

Thank you for the encouragement!

[KT-B]

My pleasure, are you enjoying writing the story? Did you have an idea of start, middle, end or is the story telling itself as it goes along? Your doing a great job I was riveted whilst reading this.

[Philip Muls]

It kind of flows out of me. But I think I better give it a structure and some direction.

[KT-B]

cool well whatever your doing it works, best wishes

[Raylene]

So far my favorite chapter sorry it took me so long to get back to you I am reading it now.

[Ted Kniffen]

Good chapter, Phillip. The characters are still interesting and it looks like progress is being made on Peter's drinking issue, which you are describing very well. I like the idea of the stories Peter writes as therapy. It is rather wordy, but that can be addressed in edits. Some grammatical things - contractions - spelling - but nothing to be terribly concerned about. One thing “What started that descend, Peter? What changed?” should be “What started that descent, Peter? What changed?” Perhaps a few gestures, facial tics, body postures here and there to show us how these people are dealing with the same problem? All in all it's coming along nicely and I look forward to the next bit.

[KWP]

I haven't read any yet ... I will ... but when I scrolled down I did read this ...

'I feel a sudden exhilaration with this new insight'

you know I wrote a whole 120,000 word novel and had it assessed by a professional and the main thing she told me was I wrote everything by 'telling' not showing ... above you have TOLD the reader what is happening, instead we need to be showing .... um, for example ...

What happened next took no more than a second, looking back it could have been a whole lifetime, waves of realisation swept through my body, like an awakening of sorts. My skin pricked all over in a gatheirng of goosebumps, even though the water itself had been tepid since I first got in. I was awake, alive and awake with new insight. Before I had been blocked, but now there was alight ahead and a road leading home.

Okay because I didn't read the rest of your story, it may be out of context, but I am trying to give you an example of how to write by showing, YOu must allow the reader to experience thier five senses in your writing, for when you do ... they sink ... right ... in ...

PS ... I think sudden, suddenly is one of your crux words :) XX

[KWP]

PS I am still working on 'showing' myself X

[barleygirl]

I find myself agreeing with KWP's review (below) about most things. In this doctor/patient discussion, you bring up the idea that the patient is too much "inside his head" . . . which is interesting, becuz the reason I find the chapters of this book a little hard to plow thru is becuz it all seems a little too cerebral to me. Maybe it's the way you format dialogue, with the name & a colon in front of each bit of dialogue. I'm not seeing these two people interact. It's all mental. I'm not getting body language or glancing looks that convey quite a bit in every conversation. So it's kinda coming across like droning on & on & on. Quite frankly, it's a little boring by this point in the story. It's like listening to a tape instead of seeing a film. Normally I really love & admire your writing, I've found many of your stories very compelling & amazing. But this is not one of my favorites.

[Philip Muls]

Thank you for honest feedback. I need to reformat the dialogue, that much is clear. Make it more of an interaction, more dynamic. Do you like the storyline?

[barleygirl]

I'm often interested in reading pieces that explore mental issues such as addiction. I can't put my finger on the reason why this one does not compel me as much. It might just be me in a different mood, wanting more entertainment & not so much needing to analyze as I read. Or maybe we've become more programmed to associate stories about alcoholism with more drama, which isn't a realistic expectation. I think your storyline is well done for the topic it addresses. I also feel you're showing a realistic side of how it goes when one is trying to work thru an addiction problem. I think a reader might need to be in a probing state of mind to get into the mental analyses that weave thru your story. I used to be a very cerebral writer like this & people weren't wild about my stories, but one or two would really identify with the situations. Maybe that's why I started doing more entertaining type stuff lately . . . ?!?!?! I guess it depends on what response would feel like a satisfying response to your story . . . !?!?!?!

[Philip Muls]

Thank you, I know this is not for a wide audience. But your remarks helped a lot, I just spend 10 hours on a flight from Beijing to Vienna reworking the 4 chapters. I have uploaded new version of chapter 1. Thanks a lot!

[Philip Muls]

I have uploaded a new version of Chapter 4. If you would find the time to see you like it better now...
Kind regards
Philip

[barleygirl]

This chapter is so much better, so much more attention-absorbing, I can hardly believe it's the same story. I can't believe it was just the changed dialogue formatting alone. It seems like you were writing about real relatable people with a connection to each other and themselves (despite a little cerebral stuff toward the beginning, but ok becuz we know they're both pretty cerebral guys). That the characters were relating to each other with a more believable & palpable connection, this draws the reader in & develops that reader connection, too (which I never felt before in this story).

In the final essay, paragraph starting with "Like a shipwrecked person . . . " -- this is too "out there" & it made my eyes glaze over . . . when prior to that, I was very much relating to the visceral experience of swimming & tempting fate, etc. I would just delete that paragraph -- it's too much expository after such intensely told sensory.

[Philip Muls]

Thank you, this really helps me. Kind regards Philip

[KWP]

Okay, I am thinking you are trying to convey a lot in this section and I am wondering if it is too much. There's a lot for the reader to digest ... and all in dialogue too. I am trying to think of a way around this and so far I can only come up with having two Point's Of View ... One the Doc, and Two, Peter. This way you could quite possibly convey much more with Peter's inner dialogue. I just feel you are trying to get too much information out via the dialogue.

If I was you I would consider using less words, like cut out at least a quarter. For example, its small example, you said

I decided to test the waters .... can you see the redundant words? perhaps instead just 'testing the waters, I said'

In terms of your actual dialogue - I think you need to read it aloud. Is this they way people actually speak? I feel it is too contrived. Consider Peter butting in over the Doc, consider Peter using a bit of slang while the Doc is more proper, consider condensing words from I would to I'd ... it's more realistic dialogue, and when it's realistic the reader will much more easily fall into it.

All of a sudden - this is cliche - I was told never to use cliches - this one in particular.

'A deep sense' this does not fit with the person I feel Peter is.

'she seemed alarmed at first but was probably used to people panicking now and then.” -this is redundant - you only need what is absolutely necessary to the story line - if it doesn't marry in - get rid of it.

“Trapped on a plane over the Atlantic, in the midst of a severe panic attack. You only had to raise your hand and a caring cabin attendant would have brought you the alcoholic drink of your choice. Do you know how amazing that is, Peter, that you have resisted that urge?” - - - I just don't know if a qualified Doc would deal with his alcoholism in this way ... seems leading.

Do you know what your crux words are?

Hope it helps - I like it when people review my stuff like this - I do hope you get something ot of it. If you don't - chuck it all away X

[Philip Muls]

Thanks a lot for this relevant feedback KWP. Did the chapter capture your interest though?

[KWP]

yes it did - I do feel like I am getting to know the pair of them - I do feel they are digging deeper for something X

[Philip Muls]

What exactly are crux words?

[KWP]

Words that writers use out of habit ... for me they are that, but, because and more - they add nothing to my writing and usually if I take them out it says exactly the same thing. :)

[Philip Muls]

Hi, I have rewritten all 4 chapters on a long flight from China to Europe. Kind regards, Philip

[KWP]

are they all edited here?

[Philip Muls]

Yes they are. I hope it is an improvement...

[wordman]

i can see you now,newyork city office,best seller list,guest on the top talk shows

[Philip Muls]

You are ahead of me there, wordman, but thanks for the encouraging words. Kind regards Philip