exile rewritten as promotion
He’d tried the Straight On Narrow and for his pains had been threatened and dismissively sent off; he’d given it his best, and for the most part impressively; and he had been sent Away, Alone, and at least now could openly hide.
Context
The addict's account of his own expulsion from the recovery house, laundered on the spot into a success story: he gave the sober road his impressive best, was mistreated for it, and has now been liberated into the freedom to "openly hide." The program's own capitalized idiom is repurposed as the vocabulary of denial — the eviction that should read as bottom reads instead as graduation.