In the early evening of March 31, 2009, San Antonio author, one-time Green Party candidate, and animal lover Harlan McVea opened a packet of mustard and began to write his suicide note. He was beginning a familiar descent into the hellish chills, cramping, and nausea of drug withdrawal. Though he preferred methadone, which he bought from friends in various drug-treatment programs, the 31-year-old McVea had been unable to score the previous week.

When arrested and incarcerated in the Victoria County Jail, Diane was wanted in Texas on criminal trespassing charges for climbing a tower at Dow Chemical to unfurl a banner protesting how the company failed to take responsibility for the 1984 chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, where 150,000 people were poisoned. The following is a January