Going back out, that's what he fears most. To resume his last miserable drunk, homeless, loveless, broke. Scratching up money for a fifth of whatever he's drinking - ***** when he's semi-flush, cheap wine when he's not.
Lacking the guile to beg or steal, he washes dishes in a dive for a meal and a bottle, sweeps out bars for drinks, knowing he can't hold a job much longer than a day. Scavenging cigarette butts from barroom trash cans. No place to get out of the cold except for the missions and flop houses.
And he hates the flop houses with their toothless managers spreading their ****-eating grins. He dreads the city winter as the cold seeps in and wraps its tendrils around him, and he fears seeing one more sooty gray dawn with grizzled men like himself mindlessly shuffling, searching for the next drink.
He fears the back alleys, fears he's destined to live in their filth, huddled in whatever hole or box he can find. No longer caring for himself, just craving alcohol. That insatiable craving. And it's the grayness he fears, the empty, pallid expanse of his remaining years and losing people who used to love him.
He's frightened of going out and not coming back. And he fears thoughts of suicide. He has no answers to why he drinks, why he gives in to the bottle. His mind cannot or will not grasp that final thought. ---