The histories given by most narcotic addicts of their efforts to get relieved of addiction, show that following the withdrawal of opiate drug in many if not most instances has come weeks and months of weakness, and discomfort, nervousness, sleeplessness, and pain which have persisted for weeks and months, establishing the basis for the much emphasized “after care,” of some investigators. While so-called “after care” is unquestionably as important as convalescence from any other disease, it is my belief that as understanding of addiction as a clinical disease becomes more general, and more attention is paid to the study and scientific management of the disease itself, the stage of “after care” will come to assume less importance. Addiction is not the only disease which furnishes examples of cases in which incomplete and unsatisfactory results have been merely a low-grade continuation of the fundamental disease and have been interpreted as a protracted convalescence. “After care,” or convalescence, following satisfactory results of clinical treatment and complete arrest of addiction-mechanism activity has no terrors for either physician or patient. It is very short and does not require any more restraint than any other convalescence, unless conditions exist following active treatment which should have been recognized and handled and eliminated earlier from the picture. I shall discuss this again later. “Sudden” or “forcible” withdrawal, or immediate deprivation of opiate drug is still advocated by some investigators, fewer and fewer of them, however, among medical men. There are cases of, and stages in addiction-disease and its development where this means of procedure may be pursued without all of the serious objections with which it must be regarded as a routine method of general enforcement. That forcible deprivation of opiate drug may end in death is a matter of too easily found and authoritative medical record to be ignored. It has been discussed as one of the possibilities by medical writers over many years. Even the newspaper reports of deaths and suicides following sudden deprivation of opiate should be sufficient to give pause to those who would still advocate this measure as a desirable procedure.