dancing with the inhibitions unmedicated — "The smiles alone in these places…"

The cost of sobriety shown at the dance: young recovering addicts dolled up and trembling at a Davis Square Sober Club, socializing "with all your self-conscious inhibitions unmedicated and screaming in your head." The everyday terror of being a person without the Substance — the excruciating smiles the measure of what the drug used to smooth over.