the iron will that walked away: self-control is no defense
I watched this man put down all sugar and treats when he first got diagnosed. Just put them down and walked away. Not even a whimper or backward glance.
Context
The theme's sharpest argument for surrender over willpower, made by a negative example. Hoyne is precisely the man AA distrusts — the one with a "will of steel," who renounced all sugar at his diabetes diagnosis "and walked away. Not even a whimper," the very self-willed white-knuckle abstinence the program warns cannot save you. And it doesn't: the same iron autonomy that mastered sugar is annihilated instantly by the Entertainment, "an American adult of exemplary self-control and discretion" reduced to restraints. The book sets this deliberately against the previous scene's Roy Tony ("we done surrendered our wills"): self-control is no defense against the thing that owns you, and the will that thinks it can hold the line is exactly the will that gets colonized. Only the surrendered will survives; the iron one shatters.