"I recall working with a patient who was in the end stages of AIDS. Not very long before I had met her, she was a student on an athletic scholarship at an Ivy League school. She left school and ended up selling herself on the street to support her drug habit. "I can't tell you the number of times I stepped over the dead body of one of my prostitute friends to sell myself one more time." Why? "Because, even if it's just for a little while, the drugs take you so far away from the pain, that you tell yourself that it's worth it.""