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