occasional Bing, monthly chips, and I know I'm sober
cocaine-ingestion this occasional and last-resort is such a marked reduction of Use & Abuse for Lenz that it’s a bonerfied miracle and clearly constitutes as much miraculous sobriety as total abstinence would be for another person without Lenz’s unique sensitivities and psychological makeup and fucking intolerable daily stresses and difficulty unwinding, and he accepts his monthly chips with a clear conscience and a head unmuddled by doubting: he knows he’s sober.
Context
The relapse-denial engine in full operation: Lenz reasons that because his secret cocaine use is so much less than it used to be, occasional use is for him the equivalent of another person's total abstinence, and so he takes his monthly sober chips with an untroubled conscience — he knows he's sober. The specialness plea ("Lenz's unique sensitivities") is the exact move the Program is built to defeat, and the tradecraft that follows (never on the walk home, the lemon-juice and bleach E.M.I.T. beats, banter with Don G. as the stream plays over bleached fingertips) is the secret user's craft surviving intact inside the House.