Diary of a Drug Fiend

228 The Diary of a Drug Fiend - It.is like vitriol being thrownin one’s face. We have no expression of our own. We cannot ‘think. The need is filled by these words... . The impact of light itself is a bodily pain. “When the sun is a living devil Vomiting vats of evil, And the moon and the night but mock The wretch on his barren rock, And the dome of heaven high-arched Like his mouth is arid and parched, And the caves of his heart high-spanned Are choked with alkali sand!” We are living on water. It seems for the moment to quench the thirst, at least part of it. Peter’s nervous state is very alarming. I feel sure he has delusions. He got up and staggered to the mantelpiece and leant against it with his arms stretched out. He cried in a hoarse, dry voice :— “Thirst! Not the thirst of the throat, Though that be the wildest and worst Of physical pangs that smote Alone to the heart of Christ, _Wringing the one wild cry ‘I thirst’ from His agony, While the soldiers drank and diced.” He thought he was Jesus on the Cross instead of the Dragon, as he really is. It makes me very nervous. about him. : When he had finished reciting, his strength suddenly failed him, and.he collapsed. The clatter of the fire- irons was the most hideous noise that I had ever heard. When 1 can summon up enough strength to write in my diary, the pain leaves me. I see that there are