The marijuana relationship and the Stopping/relapse cycle — "Not 'drugs.' Stopping."

pivotal · UNDATED (recurring pattern, "for years")

• When: UNDATED — a standing, repeating pattern she describes to the doctor as running through her prior depressions
• What: Her signature clinical exhibit, testified in scene 024. She loves marijuana ("Bob Hope," "Bob"): "sometimes it's like the center of my life." The cycle: she is told point-blank not to smoke on the Parnate (a roulette combination), talks herself into it anyway, escalates to secret all-day one-hitters (fan out the window, faking sickness so her mother calls in for her), grows paranoid and self-disgusted, then quits cold ("No More, This Is It," throwing out papers and one-hitters) — and a couple of weeks after stopping, the feeling "always starts creeping in." She insists the causal factor is not "drugs" but "Stopping": the depression is a marijuana-withdrawal phenomenon (a connection the resident-doctor notes the clinical literature does not support). The wanting is not self-harm but its opposite: relief. Her drug profile is pure depressant-class: she has "never done Ice, or crack/'base/crank, nor even cocaine or low-impact 'drines" — per the note's addictionology, "those who like downs and Mr. Hope rarely enjoy stimulants" and vice versa — though "pretty much every class of addicts drinks" (n286 p. 1053).