Hal and Pemulis on the DMZ and quitting — "Because you know why? What if…"
‘Because you know why? What if it’s true? The word. What if you are? So the answer’s just walk away? If you’re addicted you need it, Hallie, and if you need it what do you imagine happens if you just hoist the white flag and try to go on without it, without anything?’ […] ‘You lose your mind, Inc. You die inside. What happens if you try and go without something the machine needs? Food, moisture, sleep, O2? What happens to the machine? Think about it.’
Context
Pemulis's counter-doctrine to quitting cold: without the needed thing you don't get better, you die inside. His idiom for surrender — "hoist the white flag" — is, pointedly, the name of Gately's AA group, where the book stages the opposite claim. The prophecy of losing your mind reads straight onto Hal's Year-of-Glad condition.