the Serenity Prayer over the bedpan

Mortification as the answer to rage and lust at once: the Job-rage evaporates not through argument but the instant a gorgeous nurse arrives twirling a bedpan and enema like a gunslinger, and Gately, about to die of shame, falls back on the prayer. The recovery chapters' tonal signature is exactly this — the spiritual crisis punctured by the body's basest need, the addict returned to the Present by having to hug his own knees while someone helps him take a shit.