Diary of a Drug Fiend

A Heroin Heroine a that want to wallow in action that need three meals a day. I hardly ever talk—words seem such waste, and they are none of them true. No one has yet in- vented a language from my point of view. Human life or heroin life? I’ve tried them both; and I don’t regret having chosen as I did.” I said something about heroin shortening life. A wan smile flickered on her hollow cheeks. There was something appalling in its wintry splendour. It silenced us. She looked down at her hands. I noticed for the first time with extreme surprise that they were extra- ordinarily dirty. She explained her smile. “ Of course, if you count time by years, you're very likely right. But what have the calculations of astronomers to do with the life of the soul? Before I started heroin, year followed year, and nothing worth while happened. It was like a child scribbling in a ledger. Now that I’ve got into the heroin life, a minute or an hour—TI don’t know which and I don’t care— contains more real life than any five years’ period in my unregenerate days. You talk of death. Why shouldn’t you? It’s perfectly all right for you. You animals have got to die, and you know it. But I am very far from sure that I shall ever die; and I’m as indifferent to the idea as I am to any other of your monkey ideas.” She relapsed into silence, leaned back and closed her eyes once more. I make no claim to be a philosopher of any kind; but it was quite evident to the most ordinary common sense that her position was unassailable if any one chose to take it. As G. K. Chesterton says, ‘ You cannot argue with the choice of the soul.” It has often been argued, in fact, that mankind lost the happiness characteristic of his fellow-animals when he acquired self-consciousness. This is in fact the meaning of the legend of “The Fall.” We have become as gods, knowing good and evil, and the D.D.F. F