the withdrawal nobody names — "He’d never say this to Pemulis…"
He’d never say this to Pemulis unless Pemulis asked him directly, but Schacht suspects Pemulis is physically ’drine-dependent, Preludin or Tenuate or something.
Context
The diagnosis the addict cannot make about himself, made instead by a bystander who keeps it to himself: the pre-match sickness Pemulis blames on nerves is, to Schacht's eye, withdrawal — a physical 'drine-dependence with a name Pemulis will not connect to the stomach that betrays him every time. The gap between the ritual (stop everything the day before) and the reading (the stopping is what makes him sick) is the whole clinical shape of a habit the user still calls a choice.