Angel on Probation

By Don Miller

Psychologist Doctor Gary Brennan's wife died of a drug overdose. This started Doc on a crusade to save America's drug addicts before they kill themselves, go to jail or go crazy.

Doc has spent years making the rounds of his elected leaders trying to convince them that sobering up addicts saves lives and money. Unfortunately, Senator Steel, who Doc tries hardest to convince, is actually a Devil himself working to turn the human race into addicted lost souls.

Grace is on probation because in her last assignment 350 years ago a housekeeper was very lonely. Grace used some angel dust on three guys, with the idea they would be attracted to her. They were so aroused they ended up raping the girl, causing Grace to lose her wings and be placed on probation. Her coming back to earth in a cloned but very attractive body to help Doc was her first assignment in 350 years.
One of the first things Grace does on earth is to call up her old Friend Laz, or Lazarus who was raised from the dead but something was changed in his DNA and he became an immortal. Grace and Laz have known each other for 2,000 years.

After not eating for 350 years Grace gorges herself on hamburgers and ends up vomiting. Unaware of the modern-day separate facilities for men and women, Grace follows Doc into a men's bathroom and has to be told to wait outside. Another time she insists that Laz (who is curator of the Antiquities Museum) take her cousin's mummy off display in the Egyptian exhibit. Grace was a water/beer girl for the pyramid builders some 3,000 years before Christ and before her Angel days. There are heart-warming scenes like when the children who have been in foster homes are reunited with their now sobered-up parents.

With Laz's help, and in the course of battling dragons, various forces of Evil and Beelzebub, Doc and Grace proceed to implement Doc's Clean and Sober Forever program. The final battle is The Circle of Fire in which the Angels, Doc and Laz have a show down with the devil and his cloned zombie squads.

Grace and Doc are strongly attracted to each other but in spite of temptation, Grace does not become a fallen Angel. Does Doc finally find love? How does he finance the continuation of "Whispering Pines," his teenage rehab center? How does he survive arrest and jail for false accusations of perversion?

In between sobering up reluctant teens and enrolling those leaving prison in Doc's and Angel Grace's Clean and Sober Forever program before they descend back to drugs, Grace keeps pushing Doc to put his ideas on paper. He can't keep up with her demands and says, "You help me write it," and she does and they alternate writing the chapters. Their final product is their book "Escape from Hell: Clean and Sober Forever" by Angel Grace and Dr. Gary Brennan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don Miller
• Release date: Aug 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466121508

Don Miller

Ph.D. awarded in clinical psychology from the University of Utah in August 1966. Dr. Miller has written movie scripts and other books. Detailed synopses of his works can be found on his website. He has a full time practice in Chula Vista, California, near San Diego.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE: DR. GARY BRENNAN’S CRUSADE

Dr. Gary Brennan, or Doc, is age 36. He was married at age 18. After his marriage, he attended college, studying journalism. Doc’s wife Amanda died two years after their marriage, of a drug overdose. Doc then changed his major to psychology. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from Long Beach State University at age 21. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA at age 26. Doc worked at a community mental health clinic for three years post Ph.D. He began private practice at age 29.

Since he couldn’t save his wife, Doc’s mission is to find a way to keep people from killing themselves and each other because of drugs and to keep people from ruining their lives with drugs. After he thought he had discovered a plan, the mission morphed into a quest to sell his plan to someone who could implement it. Doc spent ten years talking to anyone who would listen including congressmen, the Mayor, city council members and State Senator Steel.

It’s not a bad job, Doc told himself. He meant, being a psychologist. The first couple of years after his Ph.D. he tried to apply the techniques he had learned in training and others that he had read about in books including techniques to help people recover from anxiety and depression. He worked on finding better and faster ways to help people feel better. The studies kept coming, comparing talk-therapy treatment with antidepressant medicine. The numbers felt good and were good. Therapy almost always won out, especially in the long run. Three years down the road, the medicine alone group had a 70% relapse rate. Seventy percent had gotten depressed again. Only 15% of the therapy group had gotten depressed again. Doc got better at doing therapy as time went on.

It felt good to have the power to heal. People would come in upset, suicidal and the magic of words, in an hour session, helped them find hope again. After they thought about Doc’s words in the few days after their sessions their moods usually continued to improve. It worked. Doc thought a medical doctor must feel the same way when people come in bleeding, full of disease, and the right antibiotic and the right stitches made it okay again.

Almost everyone has experienced some kind of trauma sometime in his or her life. Maybe they were beaten as children or had husbands or wives who had left them. Or they had children who wouldn’t obey. Doc found that virtually everyone who was crying or suicidal had bad things to say about themselves. They didn’t know how to forgive themselves for their big or even little mistakes. Before the first session was over Doc’s job was to talk them into being nicer to themselves. Anytime they wanted to tell themselves, You messed up again, you’re stupid, Doc would tell them to say instead, Next time, and complete the sentence. For example, You hit your four-year-old when he spilled his milk and you think you’re a rotten mother. Say this, ‘Next time I will stay calm and help him clean up the spilled milk.’ Then he taught the parent how to visualize and rehearse the new behavior. It’s like learning lines in a play, he would say, If you don’t practice your new lines the old behaviors you want to change will come back."

The visualization and rehearsing of new behaviors was not to just stop people from beating themselves up for their mistakes. It was to prepare people with an alternate behavior for the next time their child spilled their milk. Or the next time they became angry with their spouse or with the baby’s breaking of a vase. With practice, any problem situation could trigger a response that was more relaxed, focused and much more likely to achieve the desired results. That is, less spilled milk, less fights with a spouse, less broken vases, etc.

The magic words that Doc used were those words that got people to treat themselves nicer. When they did, their depression eased. The magic words were those words that helped people discover that they could decide how they wanted to act and practice that new behavior. They didn’t have to be angry or afraid any longer if they practiced the new ways they wanted to change their behavior.

Doc walks into state Senator Scott Steel’s office reception room. Back again? Still trying to sell the Senator on your Clean and Sober Forever Program? Leslie, Senator Steel’s secretary asks. I guess there’s something to be said for persistence.

What can I say, I’m a man on a mission, Doc says smiling."

What you’re proposing sounds a lot like the D.A.’s re-entry program. They will enroll people just going to jail, give them treatment in jail and follow them when they get out. Like your program, if they don’t show up for treatment or meetings after release from prison they will go get them.

I like the re-entry program, Doc says. It’s a move in the right direction. But it’s too selective. Anyone with any mental problems and anyone who has committed a violent crime is excluded.

What’s wrong with that? Leslie asks.

Symptoms of mental illness are often a direct by-product of substance abuse, Doc says. Close to half the people who became psychotic on drugs stopped showing symptoms of mental illness after they sobered up. People under the influence commit the vast majority of violent acts. Most of them stop violence and crime when they sober up.

Maybe you can pitch that to the Senator, Leslie says.

The re-entry program is picking the cream of the crop, non-violent offenders with no mental illness. The other eighty percent of the people in jail because of drugs are being left out. With my program, most of the ones the DA is leaving out could return to society, work, and stay out of jail.

A buzzer on her desk sounds and Senator Steel’s secretary says, You can go in now. He’s very busy. Try to keep it to five minutes. Maybe he’ll listen this time.

Doc is escorted into Senator Scott Steel’s inner office. He hands the Senator an envelope and says, I’m glad you were able to see me today. I’m going to leave you with some information that proves that within five years we can cut the six billion California prison system budget down to two billion or less by doing prevention and rehabilitation of drug abusing criminals. I know your name has been linked to some talk of legalization of drugs. I’ve heard talk that people who are in pain need to self-medicate with the drug of their choice. I can show you that drugs create ten times more problems than they solve. If people need drugs to self medicate how come people on drugs kill themselves at ten times the rate of sober people?

Maybe they just didn’t get the right drug and the right dosage, Senator Steel says.

Massive amounts of research studies show that when criminals sober up they stop committing crimes, Doc says. We’ll save additional billions on law enforcement budgets because of the drastic reductions we’ll be experiencing in crime. The courts won’t be clogged with cases. Right now, we’re still going after supply instead of reducing demand. It’s so simple but nobody gets it. If nobody is buying drugs nobody is growing poppies and nobody is manufacturing drugs and nobody is selling drugs. And then the drug wars are over and the drug dealers are out of business.

You want to stop arresting drug dealers? Senator Scott asks, looking bored.

We wouldn’t need to, Doc says. If we sober up all the users there is no demand for drugs and the dope dealers are out of business. The mental health system is being flooded with people whose brains were tweaked too many times with drugs. They got pushed over the edge into a permanent psychosis and they haven’t been able to come back. More and more teenage marijuana smokers are showing up with psychotic episodes because the pot is ten times stronger than it was a few years back. Teens will be the first target population for the Clean and Sober Forever Program. Any parent who suspects that their children are smoking pot should get help from the county to sober them up. I don’t mean six months in juvey or a year in jail. I mean five days of detox and trips back to detox for short periods whenever he or she tests dirty. Virtually everybody who is a hard drug user started by smoking marijuana. It is a proven gateway drug. And did you know that young people who use marijuana just once a week have double the risk of depression later in life? And that teens between twelve and seventeen who smoke marijuana just once a week are three times more likely than non-users to have suicidal thoughts?

What? Senator Steel asks. You would take the marijuana away from some little old lady who is dying of cancer? When the only way she can keep from throwing up after chemo is to smoke some pot?

I have no objections to terminally ill people spending their last days under the influence, Doc says. But we shouldn’t allow the minds of our eleven to eighteen year olds to be rotted away with this stuff. We can stop the whole next generation of drug addicts just by making sure the teenagers just getting into drugs stay clean and sober. It’s a myth that you have to want to be clean and sober or that you have to hit bottom first before you can be clean and sober. Involuntary rehab programs work just as well, or even better, than voluntary ones. That’s because in the voluntary programs you can leave anytime you want. The involuntary programs you don’t leave until your sobriety is proven and guaranteed. We can cut recidivism or return to jail rates from seventy-five to eighty percent down to fifteen percent just by doing very tight follow-up on people on probation and parole. Five thousand a year for two years in a drug rehab program will pretty much guarantee clean and sober from then on. That saves the $35,000 a year that it costs to keep the 25 year-to-life people in prison. Because they are clean and sober, they won’t be committing any more crimes.

You’re trying to sell people on more rules in a society that cares less and less what people do, Senator Steel says. It’s all about freedom of choice.

You voted against Proposition 36, the drug diversion program, and you’ve been trying to keep it from being renewed again, Doc says.

I don’t believe in coddling criminals, the Senator says. He turns his face to the wall. Doc doesn’t see his eyes glowing bright red.

How can you say that? Doc asks. If prop 36 is thrown out thousands of drug users will be going back to jail instead of into rehab. How is that freedom of choice? In its first five years, prop 36 saved California over a billion dollars by freeing up existing prison cells for violent and predatory criminals. Over 140,000 people who otherwise would have gone to jail were sobered up and kept out of jail. Most are working, paying taxes and living productive lives. You want to throw all that out?

What kind of choice is that? the Senator asks, turning his head back toward Doc, his eyes returned to their normal gray color. Jail is no worse than being deprived of drugs if you need them to get by.

What if the choices you make kill you or someone else? Doc asks. Or suck up billions of dollars for prisons, money that could be used to hire more teachers? Maybe we can’t always let people do everything they want. Like drive 100 miles an hour on the freeway because that’s how people get killed. Let me tell you some more ways that bad choices hurt people. The usual homeless clients in the soup kitchens are being pushed aside by a new breed of homeless, aggressive cocaine addicts who use all their resources on drugs. AIDS is spreading like wildfire in the crack houses where marathon, indiscriminate sex is practiced. Even if people decide to get treatment, if they sign up it’s often a ninety-day wait for a treatment spot. By the time they wait ninety days most on the list have forgotten all about it. Some are dead. A lot of homeless, drug addicted children and adults sell their bodies for drug money. There is a plan that will help all of them.

What kind of plan? Senator Steel asks, showing a slight bit of interest.

A plan where we don't have to keep burying kids while we're waiting for them to decide to sober up, Doc says, getting excited. They’re closing that Navy base. It's the perfect place for a really serious rehab program. We could sober up thousands of kids at a time, whether they want to sober up or not! I'm talking about a very tight follow-up program. We would monitor their every move with state of the art GPS devices. One slip and they recycle back through the 30-day program. Not spend ten years in jail the way they do now for every little slip.

Isn’t that invasion of privacy? Senator Steel asks.

It’s one thing to talk about the right to die, Doc says. But these addicts, both the adults and the children hooked on drugs, are breaking many laws and dying in the process while they drag others down with them.

Senator Steel looks at his watch impatiently. Doc says, I know, your secretary said I just had five minutes. There are other critical populations that, once sobered up, will save more billions. Seventy percent of all children in foster homes are there because of substance abusing parents. We can provide parents the assistance they need so they can sober up and raise their own children. That would cut way down on the billions spent across America on the foster care system. I know there have been hints at times from your speeches that the solution is to legalize drugs to take the drug dealers out of the loop. I think you said once that if drugs were available to people over the counter at the corner drug store they wouldn’t be breaking the law. There’s a lot of information in my report that shows that unlimited access to drugs does unlimited damage. Three out of ten babies in Oakland California are born addicted to very expensive crack cocaine. How many will be born addicted to crack if it’s sold at Seven-Eleven along with your coffee and doughnuts? Alaska loosened its marijuana laws for a while. Then they found this huge upsurge in kids smoking pot laced with cocaine. They called it coco puffs. Alaska has tightened up their laws again. Much of the new wave of domestic violence is traceable to the meth epidemic. Indiana and Illinois already have programs in place for treating meth addicts without sending them to jail. They’ve cut recidivism, I’m sure you know that’s the return to jail rate, to a fraction of our state. They realized that they couldn’t lock up every addict to solve the meth epidemic. So, they’re forcing people to go into and stay in drug rehab, which saves about a million dollars per person. That is, compared to costs of keeping them in jail if their criminal/drug career hadn’t been aborted by rehab. In addition, they’re working and paying taxes instead of rotting in prison. We’re one of the biggest states and we’re falling further behind in corrections and rehabilitation and education. We already rank forty-nine of the 50 states in education and test scores. I guess we could say thank God for Mississippi, the state in last place.

The Senator winces at the mention of God and gets a shocked look on his face.

Is something wrong? Doc asks.

I believe in separation of church and state, the Senator says. You’ve got a lot of stuff here. Let me take a look at it. He picks up the envelope Doc handed him. I’ll get back to you.

I wouldn’t mind coming back to help you draw up some legislation, Doc says. We need to expand on the diversion programs; we need to rescue the teenage drug users. The drug courts are helping for the third that follow through but so many are still slipping through the cracks into addiction."

Give me some time to check it out, Senator Steel says. Still holding Doc’s packet, the Senator gets up and walks Doc into the outer office. He shakes Doc’s hand by Leslie’s desk. As Doc walks out the office door Senator Steel throws Doc’s envelope in the trash by Leslie’s desk, saying, This town is full of crack pots that think they can save the world. A hundred years ago guys like him were selling snake oil. I didn’t think he was ever going to shut up!

CHAPTER TWO: LOADED IN THE CLASSROOM

In a high school classroom the teacher is introducing Doc. Class, this is Dr. Gary Brennan. He’s going to talk to us about the benefits of clean and sober living.

Thank you, Ms. Willoughby, Doc says. Then, addressing the class, I know some of you want to be lawyers, some of you are looking for careers in computers. There are just three career choices for people who get into drugs: Jail, the morgue or the mental hospital. Thousands of heavily medicated hallucinating schizophrenics fill our board and care homes across the land. Over half of them are people who never would have had their initial psychotic episode without drugs. Doc looks around the classroom. He notices several students with their heads lying on their arms on their desks, apparently asleep. He walks over to one of the students and shakes him.

The student groggily raises his head and says, Leave me alone, Creep! I’m tired!

Doc looks in the student’s eyes and says, You’re loaded! Another sleeper has raised his head. Doc looks closely at him and says, You’re loaded too! He turns to the teacher. These kids are spaced out! How do they expect to learn anything? Call the police! These kids are obviously under the influence of a controlled substance. That’s illegal!

Ms. Willoughby signals to Doc. I need to talk to you. She motions Doc to follow her into the hallway. Look, you’re going to have to leave. We can’t mess with these kids. You say anything to them and they put sugar in your gas tank or beat you up in the parking lot. Even if we call the police they’re not going to do anything. They got other stuff to do. The police won’t take a kid and test them just because we think they’re loaded. We’ve just got to live with it and make the best of it.

Doc’s face is tight. These kids are destroying their lives!

I’m sorry. I can’t let you finish your talk. I don’t want to get in trouble with these kids, with the administration, the principal or these kid’s parents. A lot of them get their dope from their parent’s stash. A whole bunch of people will come down on me if I try to make a big stink. A lot of people are saying these kids aren’t really substance abusers, they’re just self-medicating for their pain, for their anxieties and depression.

That’s exactly the attitude that’s going to get these kids killed. I treat teen anxiety and depression but not with marijuana and amphetamines.

I’m sorry this didn’t work out. Ms. Willoughby shakes Doc’s hand. I’ve got to get back to my class. Hey, have a nice day.

Doc was angry and frustrated driving back to his office. Another defeat! Never give up! he told himself again, as he had so many times. He had to remind himself that getting upset about this latest defeat just took energy he needed for the battle. He decided instead to think more about his practice, which was a satisfying part of his life. His Rules of engagement as he liked to call them, he had found to be a high yield set of ideas that resulted in very large changes in a short time. Doc certainly was not the first to train couples or parents in communication skills. Doc’s rules were a simplified version of Robert’s Rules of Order.

The rules: Do not raise your voice, use foul language or call each other names. Do not interrupt, stay on topic or stick to some kind of agenda. The rules sound simple but Doc found that it could take awhile for people to grasp and implement the three simple rules.

Doc often explained to people that playing uproar, screaming and interrupting could be addicting. Couples, parents and their children can all become locked into high intensity shouting matches. People do this in spite of the fact that when people are yelling at each other, no one is listening. Doc knew that using stimulants could be addicting. People like the power, the energy they get on amphetamines. A lot of people are depressed. Pick a fight; scream at someone and suddenly you’re not depressed anymore. Instead, you’re angry. You’ve pumped your body full of your own stimulants (cortisol and adrenalin). Your heart pounds, you have energy. The comedown is the same as with real amphetamines. The brief high of a fight is followed by even more depression.

Once the rules are laid out, any of the participants can enforce them. Violation of the rules, using foul language, calling names, incites anger. Someone speaking with a loud voice is threatening and attempting domination. Being interrupted in the middle of what you are trying to say often causes raised voices as people try to finish their thought. Trying to process the new questions or statements, by the second interruption, makes the task of processing information impossible. The no interrupt rule limit is three minutes because some people will filibuster. Three minutes should be plenty of time to present a response to the other person’s last statement and think of something new to say. Name-calling is a sure way to escalate anger. The topic or agenda can be changed but both parties should agree on a change. A lot of people change topics to snipe on the other and follow one accusation immediately by another.

Doc instructed couples to closely monitor their conversations. If one of them violated the rules, the other was to drop out of content (the topic under discussion) and go into process (discussing how the discussion will be conducted). After someone yells or interrupts the conversation might go like this, I want to hear what you have to say but if you yell I get nervous and can’t concentrate. If you interrupt I forget what I wanted to say and I lose track of where we were. If you need to yell (or interrupt, or call names, or refuse to stick to a topic), I think we need to take a break and try talking again later. Maybe we can start again in a few minutes or even later than that if it takes longer for us to cool down. Sometimes being reminded of the rule being broken will result in compliance and switch to a lowered voice or the rephrasing of the statement with swear words and insults removed. If reminding of the rules still results in the rule still being broken, with the offending party insisting on playing it the old way, the only way of enforcing the rule is for someone to get up and walk away. They should say, We’ll talk later when we’ve calmed down. Even applying the rules to your nine-year-old screaming child works. We’ll talk when we can be calm and listen to each other.

Many parents come from screaming homes and duplicate their childhood homes in their adult home. If one person in a pair of communicators sticks to the rules they can eventually force the other to follow the rules. On very rare occasions, the other party will refuse further communication if they can’t engage in the intimidating, controlling, insulting and arousing communication style. The vast majority of the time the other party, spouse or child, learns to calm down during exchanges. Once calm, people can solve 90% of their own problems by taking turns back and forth in presenting their thoughts and ideas. Doc was pleased how this simple technique could make rapid positive changes in what often appeared to be out-of-control and chaotic relationships when people were willing to follow the rules.

Doc is one of several therapists who have joined together to rent a large clinic with individual offices for each practitioner. They share Laura, the receptionist. In his office, Doc looks at his watch. He walks out to the reception area. Laura says, Randy missed his appointment again. I tried to leave a message for him at school but they said he hasn’t been there lately. Maybe he wasn’t ready to get clean and sober.

Doc looks sad, Same old problem. Most of these kids will be dead before they decide on their own to get sober. I think I remember where he used to smoke dope with his friends." Doc walks out of the front door.

CHAPTER THREE: LOADED IN THE PARK

Doc is in a park. He walks up to some kids smoking pot who are sitting on some park benches and tables. He confronts one of them, saying, Randy, what are you doing?

A bleary eyed Randy moans, Hey, I’m just hanging out with some of my friends.

Doc retorts, You’ve missed your last three therapy sessions. You’re back to smoking dope. You dropped out of school. Don’t ruin your life. We were making good progress.

Leave me alone! Randy whines, mind your own business! The other kids mumble and murmur, threatening Doc, telling him to leave. Randy continues, I don’t need that therapy shit. Hey, I’m not crazy!

Doc grabs Randy and jerks him to his feet. A police car pulls up and Art and Simon, two police officers, jump out and run up to Doc. The kids all throw away their marijuana cigarettes.

Hey, what’s goin’ on here? Art demands. What are you doing with that kid? Leave him alone!

Doc lets go of Randy. "He’s my patient. He dropped out of therapy and he’s gone back to smoking dope. He’s ruining his life!

Hey, don’t you know you can be arrested for child abuse, Simon shouts You can’t be coming out here and man-handling kids!

These kids are loaded, they’ve been smoking pot!

I don’t see any joints! Art looks around.

Look at their eyes! You can see they are under the influence of an illegal substance. That’s probable cause. That allows you to take them in to test for drugs. If they’re loaded, the law says they can be forced into drug rehab. Arrest them, before they turn into our next generation of drug addicted criminals!

They have to break some other law first, Art answers. They have to beat up or rob somebody. We don’t have time to drag in every kid who smokes a joint. I just follow orders. We have not been ordered to go around and bust kids who are hanging out in the park. If that order ever comes, that’s what we’ll do. Right now what I see is an adult harassing a kid. Since I know you had good intentions, and because this kid is, or was a patient of yours, I’m not going to charge you with child abuse. His parents may decide to press charges against you. So, if you’ll be on your way, sir? Doc walks off. Have a good day, sir.

Driving home, Doc distracted himself from another disappointment by remembering one of the things that had been so upsetting when he went into private practice. So many people made appointments and didn’t bother to show up or even call to cancel. Sometimes they didn’t show up for the first appointment, sometimes they didn’t show up for the third or fourth. Doc got used to it and found there was always something else to do, a letter to write, a phone call to make, an insurance company to call to get authorization for visits. He never bothered to try to collect money from people who didn’t cancel within twenty-four hours or just failed to show up at all. Doc had felt rejected by the no-shows for the first few years in practice. He later found statistics that showed that one third of all clients do not return to psychotherapy after one or two sessions and only ten-percent remained in therapy for more than twenty sessions. The average number of visits was only about five or six sessions. So Doc found that it wasn’t just him.

The problem was that Doc himself had grown a bit too casual and had a hard time being on time himself. There was only a slightly better than fifty percent chance that his new patients would make it to their first appointment. Doc would say he was going to try harder to be on time but on most days he got to his office anywhere from five to ten minutes late. He never just didn’t show up. Luckily, Laura was there to welcome Doc’s patients. Doc knew that ordinarily he would only have a few sessions at most, to do whatever he was going to do. That’s why it was important to do as much as possible as quickly as possible. Sometimes he’d call to see why someone hadn’t come to their second or third session. At their first session they had cried and complained of severe depression and panic attacks. On the phone when Doc made a follow-up call they’d often say they forgot the appointment. They’d say that they felt a little better and that they would call up in a week or so to make another appointment (but they rarely did).

In a world of thirty second sound bites people who felt bad wanted to feel better quick. It seemed to Doc that few people had the patience to stick to anything. If Doc managed to lift a bit of their pain in a session or two, that allowed them to get some of their life back. People seemed to be too busy with their partially regained life to take the time to go talk to someone about embarrassing, personal things. Doc was glad that he had a few techniques to help people feel better quick. The best was to get them to stop putting themselves down. A quick course of psychotherapy, even if it left a lot of things unfinished, could still help people feel at least a little better, Doc decided. He had spent a lot of time trying to figure out why some people became drug addicts and others didn’t. He thought that if someone had a headache and took an aspirin and they felt pain relief, they would be thinking about aspirin whenever they had a headache. Someone who took an aspirin who had no pain wouldn’t particularly feel the need to take some more.

People, who grew up beaten, criticized, had painful memories that pop up now and then and cause depression or anxiety. Someone with a good childhood who has happy memories and smokes pot might not like the confused state that ensues. But someone in pain will take the confusion along with the numbing. Doc’s pain theory didn’t explain all the addictions, even to himself, because kids from perfect homes sometimes got addicted. Sometimes a teen’s neighborhood is filled with loaded kids whose idea of fun is getting high. Doc knew it was possible to be recruited into drug addiction when everyone you know is doing it – even if you didn’t have a lot of your own pain to numb or kill.

Back in his office, Doc calls Senator Steel’s office. He asks Leslie, Senator Steel’s secretary, Has Senator Steel had a chance to look at the stuff I left with him?

Not yet, Leslie answers, but keep in touch.

That’s what you’ve been telling me for two weeks now.

Leslie sounds irritated. Senator Steel is very busy. You’re not his only constituent.

"You’re right, but I didn’t come to him asking for something, I thought I was offering something. Let me know if he ever wants to talk to me about it or wants my help in drafting some new