Pain

 There is pain and then there is pain.  We can have a choice.  Pain one is affliction as in the pain of drinking too much.  Then there is the pain of a discipline, such as a spiritual practice.  Fasting can be part of a spiritual practice.  It can feel painful in the discipline of not eating something you really don’t need anyway such as sugar or bread.  But it is for a better purpose to fast in such as instance.  You can read something slowly or quickly in a spiritual book, or recovery book.  Quickly, you can say you did it, check it off.  But slowly is more painful because you have to pause and let some of what you read sink in.  It is reading with discipline and it might take a lifetime to read the book, but a lifetime changed by the reading.