The resident who won't surrender: Randy Lenz, the cult-objection answered, and ejection

pivotal · ~late Oct-14 Nov YDAU

• When: the secret-use-and-animal-killing span opens ~United Nations Day (24 Oct, "before Halloween") and runs through early Nov; the coke-walk with Green is 11 Nov; Lenz's ejection registered as accomplished by 14 Nov
• What: The thread's central negative exemplar — the addict who games every recovery mechanism instead of surrendering (the event 10 surrender-of-will node, refused). Lenz metabolizes "the well-known Rage and Powerlessness issues that beset the drug addict in his first few months of abstinence" not through the Program but through secret cocaine and nightly animal-killing, while performing sobriety: dodging the House's E.M.I.T. spot-urines (lemon juice, a Texas catheter), telling himself his reduced Use is itself miraculous sobriety, so that "he accepts his monthly chips with a clear conscience and a head unmuddled by doubting: he knows he's sober" — while Gately and Johnette Foltz rationalize his solitary walks as teaching the House "patience and tolerance." Around him the recovery culture states its own stock objection and answer: yes, Boston AA plainly is a cult that brainwashes you — cocaine being the fastest route in, "the Express Elevator To AA" — but (Gately's daily refrain, echoed by Bruce Green) the point is that "his brain needed a good brisk washing." The doctrine's flexibility shows here too: a newcomer's Higher Power is left deliberately undefined — "Some newcomers' Higher Power is like Nature, the sky, the stars, the cold-penny [...] tang of the autumn air, who knows" (105). Surrender is the mechanism, not the bug; Lenz's refusal of it is why the House finally has him "invited to ingest Substances and abuse animals elsewhere" (136) — his terminal arc at ev23. See the Ennet thread events 10/16 and the Lenz character material (the dog-throat-cutting and the AFR consequence are that thread's plot); here Lenz is the disease-vs-surrender dialectic.