I appreciate that. Not a few people have taken my assertion that they are distinct conditions to mean that there is a hierarchy where one is superior to the other, or where one is worse than the other.

Let me tell you, the problem I'm actually having engaging with you here is that you have unilaterally decided that my "substance abuse," was a problem I had that went away, based on nothing but that you say that's your situation and you don't want to believe that someone could think what I think while simultaneously…

You're doubling down? Please read your post again. You don't have nearly enough information about me or from me to say three quarters of what you said about me there.

Whoa, whoa whoa. What are you basing all these deductions and assumptions about my situation, and what I have and haven't been through, off of? Check yourself and come back without the projection and putting words in my mouth and maybe we can talk.

I can only speak to my own experience. Addiction has fucked with my life quite a bit, but it hasn't destroyed me yet. And I've seen ostensibly healthy people fuck up their own lives just by having bad personalities, or being stupid, or making a series of unwise decisions. It feels to me like if you really drill down…

I'm totally down if Kat is.

I'm comfortable understanding it as a mental illness, just as I'm comfortable with understanding it as a symptom of or response to mental illness, but I'm not comfortable with saying that all illnesses are disabilities, which I feel like is something I have to accept in order to make that last little deductive jump. I…

When did we start comparing problems? No, neither one trumps the other. That's not the point.

I totally want to keep talking to you and ask you more stuff, but I feel like it might kind of be weird to do it in Kinja comments like this. So I'll just keep reading and maybe pester you again another time.

Fucking insightful. Thanks. You should write a column. On a laptop. In the bath. Make sure it's plugged in, so the battery doesn't die.

Well then you're already disabled, aren't you? So you're disabled because you're disabled. Did you think about what you're asking me?

Fukaya station is so stately. Easily my favorite part about living there. Not a bad little 駅前 shop cluster around it either, relatively speaking. And damn, I have no idea what Tama-tan is. Don't tell me Tamamura has a yuru-kyara I've never seen before. That would be embarrassing. All I remember is Gunma-chan…

Haha! I don't even have any idea what to say to that. Seriously?!

Kumagaya-ish? I lived in Fukaya too for about four months between my stints in Tamamura and Ota. But all I ever did while I was there was go to Gunma or to Tokyo.

I respect that. Obviously I share that tendency, though I have more license because I'm just a commenter with a burner.

I'm so wasted that I didn't even notice that you're blind, cracker.

Well, your job puts you in a position to get buffeted by the winds of thousands of crazy strangers' exaggerated feelings, because as a society we feel comfortable attacking someone and expressing outrage toward them if we perceive them to be any kind of a public figure, and then being on the Internet makes us…

Correction for the LAist:

Fair enough. Thanks for the considered reply. I've heard the common wisdom that it's a disease and a medical issue, but I'd never heard it described specifically as a disability. I don't even totally agree with the disease designation, which I know is probably a form of heresy or iconoclasm, and I'm comfortable with…

Kat, I'm a fan of you, and I will forever love you for your write-up on Gunma, so please understand that I say this from a place of love: