Grob, the head of adolescent and child psychiatry at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Southern California, is also the editor of a newly published collection of essays, “Hallucinogens: A Reader,” which explores the social and psychological worth of such drugs. Speaking from his office, Grob spoke about the essay he coauthored, the current war on drugs, and the history of Ecstasy, which he believes has therapeutic benefit — not to mention potential as a facilitator of peace in the Middle East.

How did you, and the other authors of the study, end up being described as Ecstasy advocates in the British and American press?

We never said it wasn’t dangerous. Clearly, Ecstasy use in today’s recreational drug scene is full of risks. There’s no doubt about that, and the writer of the specific Guardian article, for example, never bothered to read our article and never bothered to talk to any of us. They just sensationalized without any facts behind them.

It looked like a horrible situation when those newspapers published their articles, but since then there have been corrections. I got ticked off when I saw the Guardian article. I think it looked like a horrible situation at first, but instead it has been an opportunity to get more accurate information about medical applications out there.

You do seem to advocate Ecstasy as a therapeutic tool. What are some of the drug’s uses in that setting?

I don’t like to use the term “Ecstasy” when I’m talking about medical applications. Ecstasy could be anything. It’s a terrible, terrible term. And by the way, do you know how the name came about?

No. How?

By the late ’70s, it was being used by underground therapists, mostly on the West Coast. By the early ’80s, when the secret had gotten out, there was a small but growing recreational drug scene in Austin [Texas] and California, and an enterprising dealer decided there was money to be made. He decided to market it under its most salient feature.

The most salient feature of MDMA is actually empathy. Which is, of course, why it’s so alluring to psychotherapists, because empathy between a patient and a therapist is one of the strongest positive predictive outcome measures you could have, right?

So here’s this guy, he’s trying to sell this drug, and it’s not selling because people who buy drugs don’t particularly care for or understand empathy. So he goes back to the drawing board and decides, “I need a better name, one that will grab people’s attention.” So that’s how Ecstasy got its name.

How did you first become interested in MDMA as a potential therapeutic tool?

I had written some articles on hallucinogens, and I thought it was a shame that psychiatry had abandoned research in the area. I started hearing anecdotal accounts about MDMA, so I thought this might be a more accessible area to study.

Ecstasy didn’t have the hype at that point, in the mid-’80s, that hallucinogens had, and it perhaps had some advantages over a drug like LSD, in that it was milder, easier to control, and facilitated introspection and articulating feelings. It appeared to be effective on people who were alexithymic — you know what alexithymic means? It means “without words for feelings.” [In "The Sopranos," Tony Soprano is diagnosed as alexithymic, among other things.]

In other words, people like men?

[Laughs.] Right — engineers. People who just could not connect to the feeling states, who were just cut off from their emotional processes, seemed [under the influence of Ecstasy] suddenly able to access those states and put them into words. And it was thought to be very helpful for relationship therapies.

Were there long-term mental health benefits even after effects of the drug had worn off?

Yes, definitely. Depending on how it was used, and whether there was a skilled therapist on hand who knew how to work within this treatment model, the outcomes were reported to be very impressive.

Now the problem was that by the time these therapists got their act together and started to organize research protocols and tried to get approval, the media had got a hold of it, and it became a sensationalized issue. Kids also started to hear about it, and if anything, the DEA scheduling hearings in 1985, and all the publicity that went along with them, really piqued the interest of young people — and the marketers of drugs to young people. The whole Ecstasy scene just took off: initially here, and then in Europe. And then it boomed in Europe and came back here, and then it started booming here.

How does this compare with the controversy surrounding the medical uses of marijuana?

Well, I think, as far as medical marijuana is concerned, the charge is that people who support medical marijuana would also support the legalization of marijuana for recreational or personal use. With MDMA, I look at it as a very valuable potential adjunctive treatment, but on the other hand, I would say that there are serious risks involved with recreational use. So I am very reluctant to advocate that this drug be used in a recreational drug scene. It’s a problematic drug in how it’s used, and people are overdoing it.

You once testified in a congressional hearing about the potential application of MDMA as a therapeutic medication for clinical conditions.

Yes, right, but particularly clinical conditions that are refractory or nonresponsive to conventional treatments. The groups that we thought would be most amenable [to MDMA] would include patients with severe chronic post-traumatic stress disorder who hadn’t responded well to conventional treatment. Also people with addictive disorders. And also we were interested in working with a population of people with terminal cancer who had severe anxiety and depression and were not responding to conventional treatment for their anxiety or depression.

What have you seen that might indicate MDMA’s medical potential?

Mostly what we’re working on is anecdotal accounts by therapists who were able to work with the drug prior to its scheduling in the mid-’80s. They had some very intriguing accounts.

It’s a very different model from conventional psychopharmacology. Conventional psychopharmacology talks about treating someone every day for weeks, for months, for years. This involves using the drug on only one or two or three occasions, separated over long periods of time, within the context of psychotherapy. This is a very different model, a model, I might add, that the pharmaceutical industry is not going to be real eager to support because there’s not going to be much in the way of profit margin in developing a drug that might only have to be utilized on one occasion.

Do you feel as if the pharmaceutical industry has been unhelpful?

Well, we could speculate, but they certainly don’t go out of their way to attack the model because it hasn’t been much of a threat. It’s been so out on the margins that for most people, when they hear about this, they are not even aware that at one point it was once perceived as a promising adjunct to psychiatric treatment. To most people, it’s just a recreational drug that is out of control among young people.

What about those who would question your motives?

I’m not going to ignore risks! There are serious risks with recreational Ecstasy. But those risks are compounded by an illegal and illicitly produced drug being marketed in massive quantities and utilized in an adverse environment.

What are the dangers that you associate with Ecstasy?

Let’s talk about how it’s used today. There are a number of problems. First of all, there is rampant substitution going on. The reliability of the drug Ecstasy is very poor. Whereas 10 years ago you could be pretty sure that all Ecstasy was MDMA, today that is not the case at all. Things have changed radically. Surveys are indicating that often more than 50 percent of surveyed Ecstasy turned out to be drugs other than MDMA.

Some of these drug substitutes are relatively innocuous, like aspirin or caffeine. Some are moderately dangerous like methamphetamine, PCP, dextromethorphan. Some are potentially lethal like paramethoxyamphetamine, or PMA, and you really have no idea what you’re getting. In fact, that’s the strongest argument I can muster when I talk to young people about the dangers of the youth recreational drug scene. Drug substitution with Ecstasy is like no other drug that I’ve ever seen. You really have no idea what is in the pill. So right off the bat, that makes it very problematic.

Other issues have to do with the fact that you can get into trouble with drug interactions. Not only illicit drug interactions, but you can also have interactions with prescription medications that people take to treat medical conditions.

What about the aftereffects of taking Ecstasy — suicide Tuesdays?

You have to distinguish between how it might be utilized within a strict treatment setting: hypothetically, since it’s not happening legally. If you take MDMA in a treatment context, you’re talking about taking it only one time, or perhaps twice over several months, all within the context of an ongoing psychotherapy.

You would also be taking it in a relaxed environment: You wouldn’t be dancing in a hot, stuffy nightclub. You’d be lying or sitting comfortably. You’d be taking fluids. So the context is key. And you’re also talking about a very modest dose and one time only. I think in situations like that you are far less likely to have a dysphoric reaction a couple days later.

However, when you’re talking about recreational Ecstasy users, one issue is that they are often taking a lot of different drugs — it’s kind of a poly-drug-use scene. They often take high dosages. They’re up all night, they’re sleep deprived, they’re nutritionally deprived, they’re basically taking the drug in the most adverse environment you could possibly imagine: Hot, stuffy, crowded clubs, not replacing fluids, exercising all night. That will accentuate the likelihood of an adverse response.

The only environment I can think of that’s worse would be taking it in a hot tub.

So you are saying that MDMA could be safe if regulated.

When I talk about safe, judicious use, I’m talking about an approved treatment context. I’m not at all talking about recreational use. If I could have my way, I would call for a moratorium on use of this drug at raves.

Why?

Because, number one, they’ve made it excruciatingly difficult to get a fair hearing on [Ecstasy's] potential treatment benefits. Number two: I think there’s nothing wrong with people who are taking a lot of a drug often to take a break and reflect on their lives, and on whether this is having a positive or negative effect on them.

What do you think of laws that seek to penalize clubs where patrons are thought to be using Ecstasy?

It’s certainly unwise. What are they doing? Identifying that chill-out rooms and water are evidence of felonious conduct on the part of the proprietor? All you’re going to do is drive the phenomenon further underground, and you’re going to make harm-reduction efforts even more difficult to implement than they already are. And you’re going to get more severe adverse phenomena occurring among young people.

I mean, if we follow to the letter this “Just Say No” mandate, and then if the kid isn’t wise enough to follow the “Just Say No” edict, are we saying he deserves whatever adverse effects he experiences?

I think the drug war has yielded catastrophic laws. The laws are compounding the problem because they do not allow for human nature.

How is your opinion looked at by the rest of the medical community?

Oh, it’s hardly looked at all — it’s not even on the board. There’s hardly a dialogue on this. Even with hallucinogens, the dialogue has eroded seriously over the last few decades. But the feedback I get when I write, when I give talks, and now that I’ve published a book, has generally been very positive.

I’m not out to be part of a raging controversy. I just think this is a very important issue that has gotten very little attention, with a tremendous misunderstanding. And I think the medical profession and the people we are supposed to be serving are being deprived of a potentially valuable treatment model. I’m not convinced that our conventional treatment models in psychiatry are ideal models.

Such as the psychopharmaceutical revolution?

[Laughs.] Yes, SSRIs for everybody. But think about the Middle East for a minute. I mean you couldn’t do this with Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat because I’m sure they are in terrible medical shape, but what about taking their children, who are adults, and get them together and provide a sanctioned, medically facilitated MDMA session? Let them have a mutually emphathogenic experience, get in the shoes of the other, feel the pain and the suffering that the other has gone through, and then take a few steps toward feeling what a mutual understanding could be like?

And have you yourself ever taken Ecstasy?

My response to that sort of question is usually along the lines of “I’m damned if I have and I’m damned if I haven’t.” If I have, then my perspective would be discounted due to my own personal use bias, and if I haven’t, it would be discounted because I would not truly understand the full range of experience the drug can induce.

So does that mean you’re not answering the question?

[Chuckles.] Exactly.

“Missed Connection with Manischewitz

Here’s the deal — I forgot about Passover. Called up all my Jewish friends and they’re not around because they did what good Jews do — went home to make their parents happy.

Anyone got room for another at the table? I’m 31, fun, I can teach you all the Sephardic tunes to the songs and my mother has already left three messages on my machine saying, ‘Did you find a place yet?’

Deliver me from this Woody Allen outtake and tell me there’s room for me at your table!!!

Peace — to all of us.”

In less than an hour, I was inundated with responses.

The first came from a Catholic guy who works at Stormy Leather, a bondage store. He wrote that as a Catholic, he was no stranger to guilt, and he promised to forward my plea to his Jewish friends.

Next came the woman whose Long Island accent I could practically hear in the e-mail. “You sound like a very nice Jewish boy, and it makes me cry to think of your poor mother knowing you are alone on this day.” I wrote back to inform her that I’m actually a nice Jewish girl. Sadly, I have not heard from her since.

Then, there was an invitation to a $49 per head Singles Seder for young men and women looking to meet others like themselves. This is where good Jews go when they’re not with their families. This is where — according to my mother, father and entire extended family — I should be. I think I’d rather die.

A young woman whose e-mail address reads “bigal” invited me to join her and her boyfriend at a yoga studio Seder.

Several memos directed me to the Hillel at San Francisco State. I decided to go. But by then it was nearly sundown, and I was already 40 minutes late. On the way, my cab driver, who told me he is Jordanian, informed me that with the exception of President Bush, “the top 100 people in this country are Jewish, which is why they support Israel.”

I suppose this would explain untold mysteries about Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Colin Powell and Oprah Winfrey. I don’t tell him I am half-Israeli, but he saw me gasp when we got to Hillel and there was a news truck parked out front. It turned out they are doing a routine holiday segment.

But given that this is the holiday that brings us all closer to Jerusalem, my Israeli half was ready to hit the ground and crawl under the cab. I almost headed home. There’s always the second Seder, I thought; I can be a good Jew tomorrow.

But then I heard music coming from the house the van was parked in front of. No body parts or flying glass, just laughter.

I opened the screen door and saw 40 people crammed into the living room, interrupting each other, taking babies out of the room, pouring paper shot glasses of Manischewitz.

I was just in time to mark the bitterness of slavery. I grabbed a seat next to an impossibly beautiful black man in a yarmulke. Immediately, someone shoves a matzo slathered with horseradish in my face — the closest thing to a madeleine a Jew can get. As my eyes bulged and my face turned red, the Israeli to my right clapped me on the back and every Seder I’ve attended flashed in front of my eyes:

The hardcore Orthodox ceremonies at the Needlers’ house in Connecticut, candlelit because electricity wasn’t permitted, where we kids sat for hours and hours at the end of the table, getting soused on Manischewitz when our parents weren’t looking, while the eldest son and father held forth, going over all the questions they’d done before.

A family Seder in France when I was 13, where I met my extended family for the first time — 50 screaming Arab Jews who looked more like Arafat than his own reflection, shouting at the top of their lungs. I couldn’t sing any of the songs because they weren’t the tunes I was used to and I didn’t speak French yet.

The camping trip where we made do with a hard-boiled egg, some matzo, chicken broth soup, apples and walnuts, and little disposable bottles of kosher grape juice by the fire, served with rice and beans.

And finally, the one where the man leading the Seder said, “When we say ‘Next year in Jerusalem,’ I see Jerusalem as God’s city, a city of peace. We are not there yet, are we?”

The Hillel Seder is “led” by a tall, good-looking, dark-haired, dimpled, blue-eyed man in his 20s named Adam, the kind of “nice Jewish boy” the poor prospective mother-in-law in my in-box today thought I might be. As he moved on to the next prayer, papers rustled. We all thought we’d lost our places.

A thick Hebrew accent suddenly called out, “Hey, I think you just skipped the meal!”

We adjourned to the kitchen, grabbing paper plates, forks, more paper shot glasses of Manischewitz. In the kitchen, people started talking about the news truck outside; we picked up paper cups of matzo ball soup and reheated them in the microwave, flagrantly turning electricity off and on in defiance of Holy Law, right under the sign that read “Please keep this kitchen kosher for Passover.”

While we waited, a few of us started talking about the NBC news truck. Why is it here? Just to mark the holiday? Hoping for an attack? Then a blond man with a familiar accent said, “Oh, you didn’t know? There’s a bomb in that truck. They are trying to defuse it right now.”

We all stopped. “What?”

“Yes, in the news truck. It is a bomb. They are working on it.”

Adam turned to him, dimples fading. “Are you serious?”

“No,” said the stranger, and wandered away.

There was silence in the kitchen. I followed him out to the living room, where he was harangued by a short, slightly better-looking version of Rushmore‘s Max Fischer.

“Are you out of your mind?” the Max Fischer look-alike said. “Do you think this is funny, telling a joke like that in a roomful of Jews? After the bombing this morning and 20 people dead? That’s not funny. That’s not clever! That is totally inappropriate.”

Totally inappropriate. And totally my kind of guy. I interrupted. “Are you Israeli?” I asked the stranger.

Russian, he told me. “Yes, I’m Jewish. My grandfather was a Cossack and he raped my grandmother; they’ve been happily together ever since.”

“Are you serious?”

“No,” he said. He and Max Fischer are grad students in comparative literature. I guess that explains it.

After the meal, the room emptied out. There were only about 20 of us left to finish, and we went around the room, each reading a passage. When it came time for songs, we couldn’t hit a common melody. There were North African tunes, Israeli tunes, Ashkenazi tunes, all competing for airtime. Non-Jewish wives and husbands stared blankly at the page, while their mates patted their hands reassuringly. The people from NBC hadn’t taken down their boom lights yet, and we wrapped up the Seder under blinding white light.

I didn’t know a single person in the room and will probably never see them again, but for the first time since last Passover, I was surrounded by Jews. My peeps.

I left feeling good, but wished I’d gotten Adam’s number.

When I woke up the next morning, the paper was full of black news about Israel. Plans to wage a full-scale assault on the territories. I called to make sure that none of the casualties were my cousins or uncles or aunts. They are so used to the bombings by now that I think they were amused by my concern.

So, at that point, a peacenik yoga Seder sounded pretty good. I called up the Integral Yoga Institute and got myself added to the list. Vegan, they said, with no wine. But mitzvah is as mitzvah does, right?

I was, of course, late. A slim, beautiful Asian woman in her early 20s, with long braids pouring down her shoulders and that grace and posture that yoga practicers all seem to have, ushered me in the back door, told me they’d just started, asked me to take off my shoes. I heard chanting, and it didn’t sound like a kaddish. It occurred to me that maybe they’d be, like, doing yoga. I instantly thought, How are these New Age peace of mind people going to deal with the “Smite thine enemies! Smite! Smite! Smite!” parts of the Haggada anyway?

I made my way to the room. About 20 men and woman were sitting cross-legged on the floor, among them a glowing middle-aged woman dressed in white, with a long cream silk scarf draped around her neck. Jalaja, a teacher at the institute (whose last name happens to be Korngold), was truly lovely. Blue eyes, short silver hair, sparkly blue toenail polish.

They were all sitting in the half-lotus position. I read ahead in the Haggada while they chanted. According to this version, slavery wasn’t a bunch of Egyptians beating the shit out of us in Egypt. Slavery is this: “Our belief systems, or a need to project blame, or the parts of ourselves that we have not yet integrated: Maybe an angry part or a jealous part or a hurt child part or a part that feels controlled or controlling.”

Jalaja, who led the Seder, explained that the parable of the four children (the wise, the wicked, the simple and the one who does not yet know how to ask) is one we must rethink and reframe in a less judgmental way. “We are all,” said Jalaja with the blue toenails, “wise and wicked and simple at times.”

If I could have prayed for a flood, I would have. I thought, Jews judge! That’s what we do. We judge.

The next half-hour passed excruciatingly slowly. It was getting worse and worse. No one here knew the tunes; they were singing the songs the wrong way. On the Seder plate: a beet instead of a shank bone, Cadbury’s Easter eggs instead of a regular hard-boiled one. And I had to listen to them turn my favorite story of death, vengeance and destruction into a feel-good New Age Hallmark card. It was like watching “Blade II” with all the fight scenes edited out, and Oprah Winfrey, instead of Wesley Snipes, in the title role.

Jalaja told us that the plagues were brought on because the Egyptians had lessons they needed to learn. Damn straight, I thought. And the lesson is my God can beat up your God.

One woman turned to her neighbor and whispered, “Well, it really is an evolving religion.” I was starving. I wanted my mom’s rack of lamb, I wanted her kugel. Plus my legs were killing me.

Finally, after an admonishment to “take a moment and just be,” we got to eat our Cadbury egg. (I watched in disbelief as the woman in front of me dutifully dipped it in salt water and, grimacing, swallowed it whole.) It was time to eat. We filed into the kitchen for our vegan meal. No leg of lamb. No kugel. No wine.

It was all wrong. A bearded man ladled me some bean stew, organic greens and potatoes. Then two Jews in front started arguing about what the hand washing really means. Jalaja smiled, turned to me and said, “Was it like this for you growing up? Everyone arguing?” Her smile was warm. Not like a yogi at all, more like … a rabbi.

I said, “I can’t remember.” I couldn’t remember because they were all so different. And I couldn’t even remember why we wash our hands. But I did remember this: One Seder, when it was just me and my mom, rather than doing a big meal, she just cooked up some chicken and told me stories. Stories from Israel, from Russia. Talmudic tales. No prayers, just stories.

The last one she told me while she washed the plates and handed them to me, one by one, to dry. “There were Jews in a village very far away from the nearest synagogue. They had their own ritual. They went to a secret spot in the forest, and they danced a secret dance and they said special prayers … and they found God.”

She handed me the biggest wineglass to dry, the one we’d left out for Elijah. “Their children forgot the prayers. But they knew the spot and they danced the dance … and they found God.

“Their children forgot the prayers and the spot, but they knew the dance … and they found God.”

She finished the dishes and handed me a macaroon. “Now, their children forgot the prayers, and the spot, and the dance …”

“What did they do?”

She dug for a chocolate macaroon. “They remembered to tell this story … and they found God.”

“But did they get the story right?”

Mom smiled and said, “Well, they remembered the story, didn’t they? Have you listened to anything I’ve said tonight?”

In line at the Integral Yoga Institute, I chatted with my neighbors: a Jew named Carol from Queens who told me she comes every year, an older woman whose husband just died, who said, “Tonight is exactly what I needed.” The lovely Chinese girl with the posture told me she’s the one who cooked the meal and it was really hard to know what to prepare.

“I wanted to keep it vegan,” she says, “but I didn’t want people to go home feeling hungry. I wanted to cook something that would be sustaining.”

I tasted the stew. Sweet carrots, onions, potatoes. Asparagus. Tomatoes. Garlic. It was delicious.

The anxious cook pulled her leg into an impossible angle and asked, “What do you think? I mean, it’s not too light, right? Do you think it’s sustaining?”

Hell yeah, I think, like manna.

“Yes,” I said, preparing to launch into my Heartwarming Story of How Lost Souls Find Themselves in the Desert.

But I didn’t have time. His eyes widened, his face broke open and for a second looked young and scared and hurt, and then it slammed shut. He asked me his question, threw down his cigarette and walked away.

It was a year before he could speak to me without glaring, and two before he would tell me why: When he was 13, he’d been escorted — kidnapped, he’d say — to a therapeutic boarding school similar in many ways to the program I used to work for. The school had since been closed down and he was suing for abuse.

So how do I sleep at night?

For two years, during all seasons, I led wilderness trips for teenagers who didn’t want to be there, who had been begged, cajoled, bribed, tricked and sometimes physically dragged from their beds before getting dropped in our laps. Once they arrived, their clothes were taken and their piercings pulled, and their Walkmen, cigarettes and makeup were put into storage. Then they were dumped into the custody of two assholes who showed them how to roll up tarp and webbing and a sleeping bag into a pack, marched them into camp and told them that from now on they’d need to inform one of us every time they wanted to go to the bathroom.

As one of the assholes in question, I offered very few answers, even fewer expressions of sympathy, and had little information to provide them about why they were there or what they could expect. We would tell them that they’d discover for themselves what they needed here, and that our job was to teach them the skills they needed to survive and to keep themselves safe.

It was usually at least a week before any of them would stop thinking of me as “that bitch.”

Their parents would spend the three weeks of the program planning for their kids’ future with the help of an educational consultant. These consultants, often of dubious credentials, would help the parents decide what to do with their out-of-control, drug-using, sleeping-around, disrespectful, underachieving, overmedicated, underappreciated, blue-haired, multipierced, ADHD, ADD, OCD, dyslexic and usually damned unhappy kids.

In the end, the kids were often sent off to yet another kind of institution, generally referred to as “emotional growth schools.” These schools often charged upward of $60,000 a year and promised all the happy endings we promised, except more of them and for longer.

And the same umbrella company that owned us also owned these schools.

Sometimes I felt as if I was only there to smooth the kids over, prep them and fatten them up for their next step. We may have been in the business of miracles, but business is still business. And healthy, balanced kids? That was our product.

But I didn’t deal with parents or schools or experts or the people above the people above me. I was just out there with the kids and the canyons and the campfires. The miracles.

Like Karen.

Karen showed up with 2-inch-long, fake purple fingernails set with rhinestones. According to routine, the outfitters had taken her clothes and given her the things that she would need for the trip — everything from a T-shirt and hiking boots to oatmeal and a pocketknife. She was small, with mascara-smudged tear stains under her eyes and long black hair that she braided and unbraided as I laid out the tarp and showed her how to roll it up into a bedroll over her sleeping bag and blanket. I introduced myself and my co-instructor, Rob, and then asked her how she’d ended up here.

Her eyes were flat. “Two fucking goons woke me up in the middle of the night and put me on a plane.”

I nodded, unrolled the pack I’d just put together and told her to try it. She stood up and looked me straight in the eye. “Look, I don’t know what kind of Outward Bound bullshit this is. And I’ll do whatever it takes to graduate and get out of here in 21 days. But if you or my parents or anyone else thinks that you’re gonna change me or make me into a good little girl by sending me to boot camp, I’ll tell you right now, it’s not going to work.”

I nodded again, and then went to talk to Rob about the fingernails. We had a hushed conversation. Would she be able to build traps, carve wood, build fires and tie complicated knots with those purple claws? Would we have to file them down? Would she get them caught in something?

We couldn’t worry about it now. There were four other kids sitting on their packs 30 feet upstream, all in various stages of discomfort and unhappiness, and we had six miles to go by noon if we wanted to beat the midday heat.

Over the course of the next week, Karen was true to her word. She hiked five to 10 miles a day without complaining. She learned how to set up traps; she learned how to make a fire by striking a rock against her pocketknife; she learned how to build a shelter from plastic, string and branches. She did her journal assignments; she spoke when we asked her to, stayed quiet when we asked her to. And on Day 7, when the therapist drove out in an ATV to meet with her, Karen told her the same thing she told us: She wasn’t buying into any of the bullshit or falling for any of the mind games.

By Day 9, the kids weren’t expected to spend as much time alone. Now we worked together in a group, sat by the fire in a group and, yes, talked about our feelings in a group. Jason explained why it had been so hard for him to quit cocaine. Christie cried about her parents’ divorce. Joey, who had been in and out of boarding schools and rehab for years, told funny stories about other therapeutic hiking trips he’d been on.

And Karen sat, quiet.

Lisa, the therapist, had instructed us by radio that we shouldn’t push her — just leave her be and let her know we cared.

On the night of Day 9, Karen told us that her boyfriend had once broken her arms with a baseball bat. Her parents were trying to break them up by sending her away. But he’d changed, she said, and she was just following all of our rules so she could get this over with and go home to be with him.

We knew from her paperwork that there was more — an abortion, constant fights with her father, hanging out with a tough crowd. We also knew that she probably wouldn’t be going home.

On Day 10, our supervisor drove out and told Karen that her parents had made a decision: When she graduated from the wilderness program, she would go straight to a private boarding school in Texas.

I went for a walk with her away from camp. She was crying and cursing, throwing rocks, clenching her nailed fists so hard I was afraid she’d cut herself. We knew that she no longer had a reason to follow any of the rules. But she had a role in the group: The other kids needed her and there were still places we had to go, wood to be collected, water to be filtered.

That night by the fire, Jason said, “You know, Karen, I’m not sayin’ I’m glad your parents sent you away. But I will say this: If I ever see that guy of yours, I’m gonna kick his ass.”

Karen wouldn’t have heard it from us. But from Jason — 17 years old, earnest and Southern, always the first to carry gear or go get water — it meant something real.

But she still wasn’t going to fall for any bullshit games.

“I love him,” she said. “And he’s not like that anymore.”

And she was pissed at her dad. When she’d gotten pregnant, he’d called her a slut and refused to take her to the clinic. He wasn’t there for her then, and now he was going to take her away from the one person who loved her? She wasn’t having it.

Two days later, we brought all the kids into base for a ropes course. It was lousy weather for a course: The heat made the helmets unbearable, and it was so windy that the ropes and poles shook. Karen and Joey were the first to go up. They climbed up a 40-foot pole and then crossed shaky parallel bars with nothing but each other to lean on as they made their way to the other side. Lisa, who was both my supervisor and the assigned therapist, was walking everyone through it, making every step they took into a metaphor.

You know how those metaphors work. Anyone who has ever had to go on a corporate bonding retreat or a scout trip has heard it all before: Climb a ladder and heal your soul.

But after you’ve spent two weeks hiking, cooking, and sleeping in the canyons, where there are no city lights and no distractions, and nowhere at all to hide from your demons, it’s tough to be cynical. When you’re up there, you’re in it, you’re hooked.

They’d completed the first leg when for no reason whatsoever Joey sat down on the platform, curled his arms and legs around the post and said, “I’m not moving.” They had been about to embark on the second of three legs, the one you can’t do alone. One person has to hold onto the post and support the other, who walks out on a wire, with nothing to grab but a hand, and then leaps for a rope, which takes the person over to the other side. Without Joey, it would be almost impossible for Karen to do.

When Joey shut down, Karen was already out on the wire, and without his hand, she was a good 3 feet from the rope she’d need to reach the halfway point of the course. She could turn around and climb down pretty easily though, and that’s what we were expecting her to do.

But Lisa called up, “What are you going to do now, Karen?”

“I’m gonna fucking jump is what I’m gonna fucking do!”

“Why can’t you do it alone, Karen?”

“Fuck you!”

“I mean it. Look at him. He gave up on you. He wasn’t there for you. So what are you going to do?”

Karen rained down another stream of curses at Lisa, who stood with her hands on her hips, squinting into the sun.

“You gave everything you had, and now you’re alone. But you’re not falling, you’re standing straight and tall. What’s next?”

Karen just sobbed. All of us — Lisa, Rob, the kids — stood riveted, waiting. “Fuck you, Lisa! I know where you’re going, and it’s not going to work! I ain’t buyin’ your bullshit!”

“I didn’t ask what you were going to buy, I asked what you were going to do. He left you, and you didn’t fall. Do you want to give up, or do you want to want to keep going and see if you can make it on your own?”

I looked sharply at Lisa. It was my 10th trip, and I’d never seen anyone do this leg without a partner. She was breaking the cardinal rule: Never set up a kid for failure.

But Karen shouted, “I’m going to fucking keep going.”

We barely breathed as she shook and swayed in the wind 40 feet above us, and then finally started to take mincing steps on the rope, cursing like a fishwife the entire time. We couldn’t see her face, just her body shaking against the gray sky. Minutes passed. And then, without notice, she sprang for the other side.

And made it.

Down on the ground we started clapping. And Karen, predictably, yelled at us to shut the fuck up.

Lisa called up, “So now, before you swing down, I’ve got one more thing to add, OK?”

“What?”

“If there’s anything you want to leave up there, if there’s anything you don’t want to take with you, you can leave it. OK?”

“Fuck you. I told you I ain’t buyin’ this shit!”

But see, there was no requirement. She didn’t have to finish the course to graduate, or to win a prize, or to win respect from a group of kids who already respected her anyway.

She took a deep breath and jumped. We all ran toward her, but she ran first to Lisa, who held her for a long, long time. And then we picked up our packs and headed back for the canyons in silence, single file.

That night by the fire, after rice and beans, after making ash cakes from flour, after telling stories, she stopped us as we were about to say goodnight. “Wait. I want to tell you guys something.”

Jason fed the fire. Christie stopped whittling her bow drill. Tim just looked away.

She whispered, not to us, but to the flames in the center of the circle.

“I just want you to know, I left him up there.”

Jason stood up and put an arm around her. She buried her head in his shoulder and started to cry.

“But I still ain’t buyin’ this shit.”

Karen did get sent off to Texas. Maybe she hated the school. Maybe she has never forgiven her father. Maybe she’s back with the arm breaker. Maybe her moment on the ropes course was just that, a moment.

But it made for one hell of a moment.

And that, Twitch, is why I sleep at night. Because out in the canyons, Karen was the rule, not the exception. And what she did up there had nothing to do with her parents, or fancy group therapeutics, or watered-down Native American campfire rituals, or the people who owned the people who owned us. It was just plain courage.

And she never even broke a nail.