A Descent into Darkness

White Knuckles

My knuckles whiten as I sit in the vacant office two floors below while listening to Nate's session with that fucking doctor on the encrypted laptop I carry around. I had been thinking, based on what Nate said at the start of the session, that he was not as far gone as I feared. But his openness to the shit the doctor's suggesting only speaks to the need for me to act sooner rather than later.

"So, just before we move on, any concerns other that dream?" Dr. Stekel asks. Now, before you get confused, I should clarify that I am referring to Dr. James when I say Stekel. Why am I doing that? Because like Wilhelm Stekel, a student of Freud, believed with the gays, this doctor seems to believe it's right to change who Nate is, just because it doesn't conform to societal norms. So what if he wants to kill people? He needs someone to accept him for who he is, not tell him how to change.

Okay, enough venting. Gotta look into this Sanchez person.

While leaving the session playing in the background, I open Chrome and look up Dr. Camilla Sanchez.

The first result is a Wikipedia page, referring to a psychiatrist named Camilla Sanchez. Seems like the right one.

I click on it.

I learn Dr. Sanchez was born in Uruguay in 1971. In 1996, after graduating top of her class from the University of the Republic, she came to Canada to work on a joint study on addiction at the University of Toronto. She continued her research after the study ended. Finally ending up with what some have called a miracle method for curing addiction in 2014. She was even in the running for a Nobel Prize in Physiology Medicine back in 2016, losing to a Japanese cell biologist named Yoshinori Ohsumi.

I lean back in my seat, feeling slightly more optimistic. If this woman's methods were so effective, surely they would have become more mainstream. Why would they not have been applied to the opioid epidemic, or used to treat alcoholism, or any kind of addiction?

I leave Wikipedia and do a little searching to figure out why her methods aren't used more widely. After a few minutes my optimism has popped like a bubble. There are two reasons her methods are not used by the masses, and they have nothing to do with any flaw or lack of effectiveness.

The first reason is corporate lobbyists. Tobacco companies, beer companies, drug companies, all of them stepping in to stop the US Congress from funding her research in order to actually train people. Here in Canada and other countries, some funding has been considered, but nowhere near enough to make a difference.

Training leads to the second issue, that being the method, whatever it is, is extremely hard to master. So even if the politicians around the world would pull their heads out of their asses, it would be hard to expand the program substantially. It seems only thirty-nine people have been successfully trained in it around the world

As for how effective it is, I read that skeptic after skeptic have questioned the validity of her method, only to come away totally convinced. No one she has treated has had a relapse, according to a statistic I just found from the Mayo Clinic.

I push away from the computer and spin around in the chair as I consider what to do. I could kill this woman easily and thwart her attempt to change Nate. But she is high profile. The cops might give a shit were she to go missing, unlike my previous victims. Though I do have countermeasures in place...Oh what the fuck? I'll reach out to him. Maybe he'll have some way I can get around her security or avoid heat from her death. Still seated, I use my feet to pull myself and the chair back to the desk.

Minimizing Chrome, I switch over my Anonymous Fox web browser and make my way to the dark web, where I log into the Sexformation chatroom as mankiller117.