The secret cocaine hidden inside sobriety: the hollowed book-spine, the beaten urines

pivotal · autumn YDAU (occasional since summer)

• When: occasional since summer YDAU; specific relapse-lines dated 11 Nov (scene 109)
• What: While collecting monthly sobriety chips "with a clear conscience," Lenz has gotten high on organic cocaine a half-dozen-odd times, secretly, from an emergency stash razor-bladed into a rectangular bunker inside Bill James's Large-Print Principles of Psychology and The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion. He rationalizes it as "as much miraculous sobriety as total abstinence would be for another person." He is expert at beating the E.M.I.T. urine screen (lemon juice or vinegar; bleach on the fingertips; a Texas catheter twice for Johnette). On 11 Nov he does "maybe five total lines" in the meeting's Handicapped head as "medicinal support" for a conversation he can't otherwise have — the Bing proving an "un-unwinder," a rev-upper that sets his mouth writhing.