the fearsomest authority figures, formerly the bullied
most M.D.s and A.D.A.s and P.D./P.O.s and shrinks, the fearsomest authority figures in a drug addict's life, that these guys came from the pencil-necked ranks of the same weak-chinned wienie kids that drug addicts used to despise and revile and bully, as kids.
Context
The addict's-eye sociology of power, delivered off a boy-faced Resident stabbing himself in the forehead pushing up his glasses: the doctors, prosecutors, probation officers, and shrinks who now hold total authority over an addict's freedom and body are the grown versions of exactly the weak-chinned kids the addict bullied in school. The recognition carries no triumph — it's a closing loop, the pecking order inverted by the disease, the ones who bore down at their books now holding the clipboard over the one who let people break lunchboxes on his head.