the Crocodiles' sermon: the fiendishly patient Disease
and then, without the protection of meetings or a Group, in time—oh there’s always plenty of time, the Disease is fiendishly patient—how in time they forget what it was like, the ones that’ve cockily drifted, they forget who and what they are
Context
The doctrine of relapse, delivered from the front seat of a Crocodile's sedan: the Disease never leaves and never hurries, so the greatest danger is the sober person who decides he's gotten "Well" and drifts away. Recovery is therefore not an achievement you complete but a vigilance you never get to stop — the old-timers "go every time, dependable as death" precisely because they know the alternative is waiting patiently for them. Ferocious Francis's cruel-tender "Live it up!" yelled at a drifted-out relapsed man is the sermon's whole thesis in two words: this is what stopping the vigilance looks like.