Diary of a Drug Fiend

Indian Summer 167 and all the trickery of commerce arose from artificial restriction. Last night’s swindle was made possible by the great philanthropist Jabez Platt. His Diabolical Dope Act has created the traffic which he was trying to suppress. It didn’t exist before except in his rotten imagination. .. . I get such sudden spells of utter weariness. Dope would put me right. Nothing else has any effect. Everything that happens makes me want a sniff; and every sniff makes something happen. One can’t get away from the cage, but the complexity makes me... there, I can’t think what I started to say. My mind stops suddenly. It’s like dropping a vanity bag. You stop to pick it up and the things are all over the place and it always seems as if something were missing. One can never remember what it is, but the feeling of annoyance is acute. It’s mixed up with a vague fear. I’ve often forgotten things before—every one does all the time, but it doesn’t bother one. But now, every time that I remember that I’ve forgotten something, I wonder whether it’s H. or C. or mixing the two that is messing up my mind... . My mind keeps on running back to that American nigger we met in Naples. He said snow made people “ flighty and sceptical.”’ It was such a queer expression. By sceptical he meant suspicious, I think. Anyhow, I’ve got that way. Flighty—I can’t keep my mind on things like I could, except, of course, the one thing. And even that is confused. It’s not a clear thought. It’s an ache and a fear and a pain—anda sinister rapture. And I am suspicious of everybody I see. I wonder if they think I’m taking it, and if they can do something horrid. I’m always on the look-out for people to play me some dirty trick, but that isn’t a delusion at all. I’ve seen more meanness and treachery since the night I met Cockie than I knew in the rest of my life. We seem to have got into a bad set somehow. And D.D.F. M