"Dopesick"
The term “dopesick” is considered slang within the drug culture for describing the horrors of withdrawal. The author uses the term to describe a state of mentality in which “you do not make good decisions.” The reality is that with the addendum of the word “sick” the jargon actually becomes merely a metaphorical excuse for, in the words of the author, bad decisions like prostituting oneself for drug money and impulsively shooting up in public and bailing out on your co-workers and not showing up for school. But it’s not failure of personal character: it’s just the symptom of an illness. Like when you have to miss work because you came down with the flu. Except, of course, when you have the flu you usually call to let your co-workers know so they have time to prepare for doing your job as well as their own.
Privileged People’s Problems
This memoir could quite rightly be titled “Privileged People’s Problems.” The author at times seems to get stuck into a gear which allows neither forward nor backward movement, but instead merely idles at high speed in the lane of whining about problems rarely affect those further down the economic ladder. The metaphorical language does little to harness the overwhelming tone of self-centered privileged bubble-vision:
“The ice-cold world of figure skating was beginning to consume my life.”
Darkness
That bubble-vision even manages to co-opt the defining metaphor of the modern age. “Darkness” is everywhere in literature, springing froth from the atrocities of the Nazi regime and the subsequent revelations throughout the 20th century of the bottomless depravity of mankind. There is darkness in the world for everybody, of course, but darkness for a kid with the connections necessary to get into the Ivy League who spent her childhood spinning on frozen water is just, somehow, not quite as compelling as other people’s darkness:
“I wish she [the author] could see who she will become, and the parts of herself she will leave behind. The darkness that she will learn to live with, and the light she will learn to let in.”
The “New” Soundtrack
The author describes how there is usually no clock by which to gauge the passage of time. This leads to a consideration of how the passage of time can otherwise be calculated which ends with the direct metaphor “This is the new soundtrack of your life.” What follows is a listing of timed activities which one can count upon every day as a marker of the day's hour progression. The promise contained within the metaphor is one that illuminates the dark side of being an inmate, but instead each day begins with the offer of “razors, razors” followed thirty minutes later with the arrival of “supplies” on a cart offering toothbrushes, soap, combs, feminine hygiene supplies. Not much which follows seems to be shockingly innovative or, really, even qualify as new. It is mainly a metaphor describing the soundtrack of one's life before they they got caught committing a criminal act and were forced to listen behind bars.
“Law & Order” Airs How Often?
It seems like there is an episode of the TV show Law & Order airing on some channel at any given hour of the day. You almost have to work at never having seen an episode. Apparently, the author managed to pull off that trick as well as the really impressive trick of somehow never having learned that some things are against the law and that doing them can—and occasionally does—result in being caught by the cops. Her knowledge of the difference between right and wrong and legal and illegal activities very often leads to achingly inappropriate metaphors:
“Technically, it was probably illegal to be driving me—an absconding minor—across state lines, but she seemed to see it as an adventure, maybe a dark version of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride involving a troubled kid and some drugs.”
