High Society by Daniel Kalla EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Daniel Kalla
- Language: English
- Genre: Thriller / Suspense
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 6.9 MB
- Price: Free
Monday, April 1
Any perceptive observer would recognize that the windowless room has been
engineered for maximum calm. The light-taupe walls are sprinkled with pastel
acrylic abstracts. The LED lighting is comfortably dim but not dark. A neutral
ecru rug covers much of the hardwood flooring. The exit is clearly demarcated
by the string of soft red lights lining the top of the door. And the relaxing scent
of sandalwood floats through the air, the diffuser nowhere in sight.
Mocha-colored leather recliners form a crescent around Dr. Holly Danvers.
Each of the seven seats is occupied. And what a hodgepodge of occupants they
are: a rock star, a CEO, an activist, a fashion designer, a lawyer, a socialite, and
even one of Holly’s own colleagues. To one another, they’re members of the
same eclectic self-labeled “tribe.” But to Holly, they’re clients, a term she much
prefers over patients.
All of them are equipped with identical black blindfolds and headphones.
Each has a blood pressure cuff already wrapped around their arm and an IV bag
suspended above their chair with tubes dangling below, waiting to be hooked to
their forearms. But that’s where the physical similarities end. Race, size, gender,
age, sexuality, and dress vary from one client to the next. Holly feels particularly
protective over each of them today, but the therapist in her reminds her it’s
merely a reflection of her own sense of exposure and vulnerability.
After all, today is the day the experiment leaves the laboratory.
Holly has been working with them for almost three months. They have made
genuine progress, as a group and as individuals, through their weekly ritual: first,
a potent intravenous dose of the psychedelic agent ketamine, followed later the
same day or next by individual therapy and then a group session.
But they’re still addicts. Each with their own habit, ranging from sex and
gambling to opioids and alcohol. Their hold on sobriety is new and fragile. One
of them hasn’t even reached that point, but that is a secret only she and Holly
share.
Eleven weeks into group therapy, Holly recognizes that all of them still have
obstacles in their paths: truths they aren’t willing to admit and past traumas they
are unable to confront. But her gut tells her that they’re as ready as they ever will
be for a session under dual doses of two powerful psychedelics. A new step for
them. And for her, at least in the clinical setting.
But Holly isn’t nearly as confident as she projects to the group. While
ketamine-enhanced therapy is legal and largely accepted, none of the same holds
true for the off-ramp she is about to lead her clients down. She’s going to
supervise them as they self-administer a second psychedelic that has no
legitimate pharmaceutical supplier and no sanctioned medical use, and in so
doing, she will expose herself to potential legal and professional risk.
She has
reservations about a few of them, especially Elaine and Salvador, the two most
anxious members. Salvador had a dysphoric reaction—what laypeople would
label a “bad trip”—during one of his previous sessions.
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