Diary of a Drug Fiend

334 The Diary of a Drug Fiend the sensations of flying. There was the same detach- ment from the affairs of the world, the same visions of normal life in perspective; the ruddy brown roofs of the houses, the patches of tilled land, the distant hillsides with their fairy-like remoteness, the level plain of the sea, the receding coast line; all these things were so many witnesses of one great truth— that only by climbing painfully to a spot beyond human intervention, could one obtain a stable point of view from which to regard the Universe in due pro- portion. At once we drew the moral analogy to our physical situation, and applied it to our immediate problem. Yet, in spite of what Lamus had said, we were both obsessed by the idea that we must stop taking heroin. The next few days passed in strenuous efforts to reduce the number of the doses, and it was then that we began to discover the animal cunning of our bodies. Do what we might, there was always a reason, an imperative reason, for taking a dose at any given moment. Our minds, too, began to play us false. We found ourselves arguing as to what a dose was. As the doses became fewer, they became larger. Presently, we arrived at the stage where what we considered a fair dose could not be conveniently taken at a single sniff. And then, worst of all, it broke on me one day, when I was struggling hard against the temptation to indulge, that the period between doses, however prolonged it might be, were being regarded merely in that light. In other words, it was a negative thing. Life consisted in taking heroin. The intervals be- tween the doses did not count. It was like the attitude of the normal man with regard to sleep. It suddenly dawned upon me that this painful process of gradually learning to abstain, was not a cure at all in any right sense of the word. Basil was perfectly right.. I must reverse the entire process and reckon my life in positive terms. That’s