Eagles don't flock. You have to find them one at a time. (Ross Perot)

I took an interest in the program. In fact, I took an interest in every program in existence, no matter how experimental. It was actually the ones that didn't work that I found most interesting.

Appease me for a moment: There was a program in the mountains of Colorado where they put four junkies in a shack in the winter of 1959 with food rations to last for four months. Their Sherpa was a trained psychiatrist. He was killed. One person froze to death. Two of them returned to their drug addicted lives. The remaining person is still in jail. These are the wild sort of programs people employ to try to shock addicts into a normal life. It's crazy.

My lifestyle changed in the house that week. While I slacked off with Gloria, I read. I read textbooks borrowed from psychiatrists, I read biographies of drug addicts, and one evening I dragged Gloria to the screening of My Life, My Addiction in the living room with the addicts. People cried. It was an interesting reaction, I thought. Maybe if I had been a true addict who screwed my life up like that I would have felt compelled to cry too. I had screwed up a lot of lives but when had I actually suffered? The lowest points in my life were detoxing.

I started to be more objective in my therapy sessions. There was a certain element of control and dominance in her position. I saw what she was trying to do but I wasn't buying it. I could tell by her reaction that other patients reacted differently than I did.

The week after that I went to the group sessions, sans Gloria, and just watched. It was fascinating to see how it all transpired. The moderators had total control of these helpless sluggish vulnerable excuses for human beings. Now that was something I could respect.