Gately, the M.D.-temptation, the Demerol reverie
Memories of good old Demerol rose up, clamoring to be Entertained. […] Let them come as they will, but do not Entertain them. No need to invite a Substance-thought or -memory in, offer it a tonic and your favorite chair, and chat with it about old times.
Context
The recovery program's own metaphor for craving is spectation, and it's exact. A Substance-memory "clamoring to be Entertained" is a guest you can refuse to host — the addict's discipline is not to invite the thought in, offer it a tonic and your favorite chair, and chat with it about old times. The craving is a visitor asking to be watched, engaged, given the recliner; relapse is what happens when you sit down and Entertain it. This folds the addict's interior life into the theme's grammar: the mind is a viewing room, the thought a cartridge that wants playing, and sobriety is the refusal to hit play. That the AA vocabulary independently arrives at "Entertain" for the fatal indulgence is the theme surfacing in the culture's own recovery-speak.