graduates comparing former-cult horror stories
the Ennet graduates who often come back and take up living-room space sitting around comparing horror stories about former religious cults they’d tried joining as part of their struggle to try to quit with the drugs and alcohol are not w/o a certain naïve charm but are basically naïve
Context
A glimpse of the long institutional afterlife around the House: graduates drifting back to the living room to swap stories of the religious cults they'd cycled through in earlier, failed attempts to quit — recovery framed as the last stop after a whole itinerary of surrenders sought and abandoned. The addict looking to give himself away to something has, the passage implies, tried many somethings; AA is only the one that finally held.