THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HASHISH
Frankly, I doubt if these were necessary. I do not sup-
pose my will to be abnormally strong; I believe rather that
there is a definite type of drug-slave, born from his mother’s
womb; and that those who achieve it or have it thrust upon
them are a very small percentage. In saying this I include
such obsessions as music, religion, gambling, among drugs.
Is the “Keswick week” less of a debauch than the navvy’s
Bank Holiday? There are people who rush from meeting to
meeting, and give up their whole lives to this unwholesome
excess of stimulant; they are happy nowhere else; they
become as irritable as the cocaine-fiend, and render wretched
the lives of those who are forced to come in contact with
them.
Personally, Ihave never felt the bearing-rein of habit, though
I have tried all the mental and physical poisons in turn. I
smoke tobacco, the strongest tobacco, to excess, as I am told ;
yet a dozen times I have abandoned it, in order to see
whether it had any hold upon me. It had none; I resigned
it as cheerfully as a small boy resigns the tempting second
half of his first cigar. After a meal (for the first day or two)
my hands would go to my pockets from habit ; finding nothing
there, I would remember, laugh, and forget the subject at
once.
I think, therefore, that we may dismiss the alleged danger
of acquiring the hashish habit as fantastic.
Nobody will acquire the habit but the destined drug-slave ;
and he may just as well have the hashish habit as any other ;
he is sure to fall under the power of some enchantress.
All these alarmist reports, however, are really worthless,
worthless at the best as the omue ignotum pro terribili fear
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