Diary of a Drug Fiend

Au Pays de Cocaine 61 “This is perfectly wonderful stuff,” I said to Lou as we passed the Arc de Triomphe. ‘I don’t know what you meant by saying the stuff didn’t have any special effect upon you. Why, you're perfectly gorgeous | ”’ “You bet Iam,” laughed Lou. “ The king’s daughter is all-glorious within ; her raiment is of wrought gold, and she thrusts her face out to be kissed, like a comet pushing its way to the sun. Didn’t you know I was the king’s daughter ? ” she smiled, with such seductive sublimity that something in me nearly fainted with delight. “ Hold up, Cockie,’’ she chirped. ‘“‘It’s all right. You're it, and I’m it, and I’m your little wife.” I could have torn the upholstery out of the taxi. I felt myself a giant. Gargantua was a pigmy. I felt the need of smashing something into matchwood, and I was all messed up about it because it was Lou that I wanted to smash, and at the same time she was the most precious and delicate piece of porcelain that ever came out of the Ming dynasty or whatever the beastly period is. The most fragile, exquisite beauty! To touch her was to profane her. I had a sudden nauseating sense of the bestiality of marriage. I had no idea at the time that this sudden revulsion of feeling was due to a mysterious premonition of the physiological effects of heroin in destroying love. Definitely stimulating things like alcohol, hashish and cocaine give free range to Cupid. Their destructive effect on him is simply due to the reaction. One is in debt, so to speak, because one has outrun the constable. But what I may call the philosophical types of dope, of which morphine and heroin are the principal examples, are directly inimical to active emotion and emotional action. The normal human feelings are transmuted into what seem on the surface their spiritual equivalents. Ordinary good feeling becomes universal benevolence ; a philanthropy which is infinitely tolerant because the