being loved doesn't render you Substance-free — "Hal finds he rather envies a…"

The book's anti-etiology credo delivered from inside a room devoted to the opposite belief: Hal, dandled and told at high volume that he was loved all through his infancy, is living proof that a loving childhood inoculates no one against the disease — and he finds himself envying the weeping man who at least has bad parents to point to. Addiction here has no tidy cause to be traced back and healed; there is no crib-scene to blame, which is worse.