Diary of a Drug Fiend

The Grinding of the Brakes 185 emotion. We are resolved to stop taking H.; and there the memory of Lamus’s letter was like a rope held by a trustworthy leader for a novice on some crumbling crag. If we could only have relied on that! But our minds were shaken by panic. Those cursed medical cowards! Those pompous prophets of evil! Every time we came back to the resolution to stop, they pulled us off the rock. “It’s beyond human power.” But they know which side their breaq’s buttered. It’s their game to discourage their dupes. But they had over-played their hand. They had painted their picture in too crude colours. They revolted us. Again, the effect of Mabel’s death, and the fact that our supplies were so short, combined to drive us into the determination to stop at whatever cost. | We struggled savagely hour by hour. There were moments when the abstinence itself purged us by sheer pain of the capacity to suffer. Our minds began to wander. We were whirled on the wings of woe across the flaming skies of anguish. I remember Peter standing at the table, lost to all sense of actuality. He cried in a shrill, cracked voice :— ‘** Her cranial dome is vaulted, Her mad Mongolian eyes Aslant with the ecstasies Of things. immune, exalted . Far beyond stars and skies, Slits of amber and jet——” I heard him across abysses of aching inanity. A thrill of Satanic triumph tingled in my soul, and composed a symphony from its screams. I leapt with lust to recognise myselfin the repulsive Phantasm pictured by the poet. :