It is one of the central ironies of my career that as soon as I got off heroin, things started getting really bad. High on dope, I was - prior to Gino's - at least a chef, well paid, much liked by crew and floor and owners alike. Stabilized on methadone, I became nearly unemployable by polite society: a shiftless, untrustworthy coke-sniffer, sneak thief and corner-cutting hack, toiling in obscurity in the culinary backwaters.