Diary of a Drug Fiend

Phaeton 43 right kind of nothing. But I divined a certain shrewd- ness in his eyes; it belied his mask of ostentatious innocence. There was another man there too, a kind of half- baked Nonconformist parson, one Jabez Platt, who had realised early in life that his mission was to go about doing good. Some people said that he had done a great deal of good—to himself. His principle in politics was a very simple one: If you see anything, stop it; everything that is, is wrong; the world is a very wicked place. He was very enthusiastic about putting through a law for suppressing the evil of drugs. We smiled our sympathefic assent, with sly glances at our hostess. If the old fool had only known that we were full of cocaine, as we sat and applauded his pompous platitudes ! We laughed our hearts out over the silly incident as we sat in the train. It doesn’t appear particularly comic in perspective; but it’s very hard to tell, at any time, what is going to tickle one’s sense of humour. Probably anything else would have done just as well. We were on the rising curve. The exaltation of love was combined with that of cocaine; and the romance and adventure of our lives formed an exhilarating setting for those superb jewels. “Every day, in every way, I get better and better.” M. Coué’s now famous formula is the precise intel- lectual expression of the curve of the cocaine honey- moon. Normal life is like an aeroplane before she rises. There is a series of little bumps; all one can say is that one is getting along more or less. Then she begins to rise clear of earth. There are no more obstacles to the flight. But there are still mental obstacles; a fence, a row of houses, a grove of elms or what not. One is a little anxious to realise that they have to be cleared. But as she soars into the boundless blue, there comes that