The White Flag AA meeting (p. 351)
and by this time the whole thing is so improbable and unparsable that you’re so flummoxed you’re convinced you’re maybe brain-damaged, still, at this point, from all the years of Substances, and you figure you’d better Hang In in this Boston AA where older guys who seem to be less damaged—or at least less flummoxed by their damage—will tell you in terse simple imperative clauses exactly what to do, and where and when to do it (though never How or Why)
Context
The generic second-person recovery arc describes AA's working language in grammatical terms: the thing itself is "unparsable," and what keeps you alive is other people's "terse simple imperative clauses" — commands with the interrogatives structurally deleted. Grammar-as-survival-mode, fifteen pages before Joelle demonstrates the opposite reflex: parsing the language instead of obeying it.