I think for most people there's a lot of reflection, conscious or subconscious, that leads up to a "sudden moment of clarity" and a great deal of consolidation

I think for most people there's a lot of reflection, conscious or subconscious, that leads up to a "sudden moment of clarity" and a great deal of consolidation work that follows. It's hard to tell the complete story of accepting a simple fact that you've been resisting for a long time. When I read something like this, I don't think, "Yeah, right," I think, "How would this have played out for me?" The story would have been long, boring, pathetic, off-putting, and embarrassing. Which may be why these things are always presented as sudden moments of clarity, though I'm open to the possibility that other people actually experience them that way. The point I take away is not the instantaneous nature of his insight but _what_ he realized: that the consequences of his vices would become more and more serious, and that he didn't want to pay the price. (The discovery of empathy, I think, was a side effect. People are generally emotionally blind to the side effects of behaviors they have no intention of stopping.)