abstinence versus recovery: AA, NA, and the Crocodiles
Gately personally is not hot on NA: so many relapses and un-humble returns, so many war stories told with nondisguised bullshit pride, so little emphasis on Service or serious Message; all these people in leather and metal, preening. Rooms full of Randy Lenzes, all hugging each other, pretending they don’t miss the Substance. Rampant newcomer-fucking. There’s a difference between abstinence v. recovery, Gately knows.
Context
The book's sharpest internal contrast between two recovery cultures, and the theme's key distinction inside it: "abstinence v. recovery." NA is caricatured as performance — war stories told with pride, leather-and-metal preening, hugging that pretends not to miss the Substance, newcomers as prey — whereas AA's White Flag Group is figured as the real thing precisely because it is unglamorous and merciless: the Crocodiles, old men with "geologic amounts of sober time," administer a "tough Enfield-Brighton love" that will decapitate any complacency. The distinction that matters to the theme is that merely not-using (abstinence) is not the same as the daily interior work (recovery); the Crocodiles exist to enforce the difference.