the gerbil-brain and the slow-drip faucet — "His Ennet House counselor, the extremely…"
His Ennet House counselor, the extremely tough-loving Calvin T., complains that listening to Green is like listening to a faucet with a very slow drip.
Context
The cognitive shape of the months after detox: past the crazed-gerbil phase of acute Withdrawal, Green settles into a thought-per-minute torpor that his counselor Calvin T. works, tough-lovingly and weekly, to crack open by trying to piss him off. The recovery institution shows its labor here — the assigned counselor, the deliberate provocation, the slow-drip patience required — because sobriety does not restore a self so much as leave a shut-down one that has to be drawn out drip by drip.