The White Flag AA meeting (p. 346)
—then unbelievable psychic pain, a kind of peritonitis of the soul, psychic agony, fear of impending insanity (why can’t I quit if I so want to quit, unless I’m insane?), appearances at hospital detoxes and rehabs, domestic strife, financial free-fall, eventual domestic Losses— […] —then vocational ultimatums, unemployability, financial ruin, pancreatitis, overwhelming guilt, bloody vomiting, cirrhotic neuralgia, incontinence, neuropathy, nephritis, black depressions, searing pain, with the Substance affording increasingly brief periods of relief; then, finally, no relief available anywhere at all
Context
The generic Substance-career litany threaded between John L.'s podium refrains: the decline arc's later stations are frankly depressive — a "peritonitis of the soul," fear of insanity, "black depressions" listed right in with the organ failures — the addiction curve dipping into this theme's clinical register on its way to the Bottom.