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Page 1 of 61922 · PDF PAGE 324
…up the hill in an extremely business-like manner, looking back from time to time to make sure that we were all right. Dionysus seemed to think it his business to entertain us with an account of the various objects along the road. “ That’s the nice man’s house down there,” he said, “T’ll take you to lunch with him if you promise to behave properly. And that’s where the doat-woman lives,” he went on, apparently assured by our guarantees of proper conduct. The solemnity of the elder boy and the rollicking disposition of the other carried us from s…
1922 · PDF PAGE 291
…ishing—all sorts of things which we in England take quite simply, in consequence of which they give no trouble. “ But where a man has to think of a thousand things before he has his dinner: what he eats, and how it was killed, and who cooked it, and so on for ever and ever, he gets no chance to develop his mind in more important ways. Taboo is responsible for the low mental and moral development of the peoples whom it afflicts, more than anything else. An appetite should be satisfied in the simplest and easiest way. Once you begin to worry abou…
1922 · PDF PAGE 181
…me want a sniff; and every sniff makes something happen. One can’t get away from the cage, but the complexity makes me... there, I can’t think what I started to say. My mind stops suddenly. It’s like dropping a vanity bag. You stop to pick it up and the things are all over the place and it always seems as if something were missing. One can never remember what it is, but the feeling of annoyance is acute. It’s mixed up with a vague fear. I’ve often forgotten things before—every one does all the time, but it doesn’t bother one. But now, every tim…
1922 · PDF PAGE 178
…ut her life. She has been in England nearly thirty years. I worked round to the interesting subject. She doesn’t know much about it. She thinks she can help. One of the women lodgers injects. She _ asked could we pay. It’s really rather comic. Eight thousand a year and one of the most beautiful houses near London. And here we are in this filthy hole being asked “can we pay!” by a hag that never saw a sovereign in her.life unless she stole it from some drunken client. Cockie seems to have lost his sense. He flashed a fifty-pound note in her face…
1922 · PDF PAGE 254
… more and more of my time, and then I had to do so many things to have things ready for him when he was able to get up. And now, I can’t think how it came about; but I believe the first sign of improvement was that the poem dropped out. He began to talk naturally about ordinary affairs. He was terribly weak and ill, and it had scared him. He was like an ordinary convalescent, I suppose—signs of returning interests in the affairs of life. I had ceased to be asymbol. I was just his nurse. Part of the time he had forgotten who I was. He was back i…
1922 · PDF PAGE 256
…an love. Spring coming back to the earth ! But it doesn’t satisfy, even so. The intervals between one’s emotions are appallingly long. I think drugs intensify the high lights for one thing ; but for another, and this is really more important, they fit up the inter- stices of shadow. It’s hard, I imagine, in the ordinary way, to come off one’s honeymoon back into regular life. I often wonder how a poet feels when he isn’t absorbed in the ecstasy of inspiration. That may be why so may of them go off the deep end, the interstices bore them. I may …
1922 · PDF PAGE 248
234 The Diary of a Drug Fiend that my ordeal is over. He stands smiling and points downwards. I think he wants me to go back to the billiard-room. Perhaps there is some one waiting for me; some one to take me away to fulfil my destiny. I know now what it was that I thought was a shot, or a door closing. It was really both of these things in a mystical sense ; for I know now who the old man is, and that he is the father of the Messiah. ...
1922 · PDF PAGE 157
…e. At first everything went so fast. It doesn’t any more. It makes one’s mind very full; drags out the details ; but it doesn’t make one think and talk and act with that glorious sense of speed. I think the truth is that we've got tired out. Suppose I suggest to Cockie that we knock off for a week and get our physical strength back and start fresh. I may as well telephone Gretel and arrange for a really big supply. If we're going to live at Barley Grange, we'll have to be cocaine hogs and lay in a big stock. There wouldn’t be any chance of gett…
1922 · PDF PAGE 235
“Cold Turkey Bar I have some idea that I had a terrible quarrel with Peter, but I can’t remember any details. I think he does, though, but he won't tell me. I don’t know why he should act like that. The only thing I can think is that Gretel Webster may have come down to see him perhaps in her astral body, and put him against me somehow. .. . He was lying on the sofa in his pyjamas. I wanted to be kissed, and went over to him with some cocaine. But he didn’t move. He looked at me with wide open eyes. There was some dreadful fear in them, and he …
1922 · PDF PAGE 109
…the Restaurant de la Cascade was like a lunch in a dream. We seemed to be aware of what we were eating without actually tasting it. As I think I said before, it’s the anesthesia of cocaine that deter- mines the phenomena. When I make a remark like that, I understand that it’s the dead and gone medical student popping up. But never you mind that. The point is that when you have the right amount of snow in you, you can't feel anything in the ordinary sense of the word. You appreciate it in a sort of impersonal way. There’s a pain, but the pain do…
1922 · PDF PAGE 33
…ebster, the German woman, had spoken hardly at all. But as soon as the three men had turned their backs, she remarked acidly :— “I don’t think we’re dependent for our drinks on Mr. King Lamus. Let’s go round to the Smoking Dog.”’ Everybody agreed with alacrity. The suggestion seemed to have relieved the unspoken tension. We found ourselves in taxis, which for some in- scrutable reason are still allowed to ply practically unchecked in the streets of London. While eating and breathing and going about are permitted, we shall never be a really righ…
1922 · PDF PAGE 111
…is son, half-way through the ten-mile walk to kirk, when the boy said, “It’s a braw day the day.” “Is this a day to be ta’king 0’ days?” Thinking of days makes you think of years, and thinking of years makes you think of death, which is ridiculous. Lou and I were living minute by minute, second by second. A tick of the clock marked for us an interval of eternity. We were the heirs of eternal life. We had nothing to do with death. That was a pretty wise bird who said, “To-morrow never comes.” We were out of time and space. We were living accordi…
1922 · PDF PAGE 310
…s nothing really wrong. I’ll look in late this afternoon with Mr. Platt for news; and if everything Is all right—I won’t allow myself to think that it can be otherwise—we can make an appointment for the morning over our business affairs. Don’t let’s lose any time.” I shook hands hastily and slipped my hand into Maisie’s arm. She ran downstairs with me, leaving the others to wait for the lift.
1922 · PDF PAGE 193
…ttend his own family, and I can see coldly and clearly like a drowning man that when- ever the idea of H. comes into my mind, I begin to think hysterically and come to the most idiotic con- clusions; and heroin has twined itself about my life so closely that everything is connected with it one way or another. My mind is obsessed by the thought of the drug. Sometimes it’s a weird ecstasy, sometimes a dreadful misgiving. “Not thirst in the brain black-bitten In the soul more sorely smitten ! One dare not think of the worst! Beyond the raging and …
1922 · PDF PAGE 65
…ispered. I understood in a second what she meant. It was perfectly true—we had been playing it a bit on the heavy side with that snow. I think it must have been about five sniffs. If you’re curious, all you have to do is to go back and count it up—to get me to ten thousand feet above the poor old Straits of Dover, God bless them! But it was adding up like the price of the nails in the horse’s shoes that my father used to think funny when I was a kid. You know what I mean—Martin- gale principle and all that sort of thing. We certainly had been p…
1922 · PDF PAGE 184
…like a flash. His con- temptuous smile became like sunrise in spring. — “That’s talking,” he said. ‘‘I’m glad you've got the idea. Don’t think I’m trying to put you off, but if you should find it more difficult than you imagine, don’t be too proud to come to me! I really do know some fairly good tips.” I was glad that Peter took it in good part. Being in good form, he realised, I suppose, that it was a serious business. We might strike a snag. August 23 The night has been a miracle! We went on taking H. pretty steadily. I think the C. spoils it…
1922 · PDF PAGE 30
…rseman type. Her strange hair fascinated me. It was that delicate flaxen hue, so fine—no, I don’t know how to tell you about it, I can’t think of it without getting all muddled up. One wondered how she was there. One saw at a glance that she didn’t belong to that set. Refinement, aristocracy almost, were like a radiance about her tiniest gesture. She had no affectation about being an artist. She happened to like these people in exactly the same way as a Methodist old maid in Balham might take an interest in natives of Tonga, and so she went abo…
1922 · PDF PAGE 236
…orway. ... Peter has been very preoccupied for some time. He writes out telegrams on forms, and then tears them up; and then he seems to think that isn’t safe, and picks the pieces up and burns them. I asked him about it; but he would say nothing, and got very angry. | I think I know what it is, though. I found a sheet of paper which he had forgotten to destroy—a letter to the War Office, warning them against German plots, and telling some things that have happened down here. I could hardly read it; his handwriting is absolutely gaga. He talks …
1922 · PDF PAGE 186
…sturbed by my own exquisite emotions. I felt myself dissolving deliciously into absence of interruption to the serenity of my soul.... I think writing this has reminded me of what I used to think was reality. It was time to go out and have lunch. The luxurious lethargy seems insuperable. .. . It isn’t hunger; it’s habit. Some instinct, some obscure and obscene recollection of the lurking brute drives one to get up and go out. The dodge for doing this is to take three or four rather small sniffs in quick succession. C. would be much better, but …
1922 · PDF PAGE 110
…ther. In the ordinary way, half a grain of cocaine can cause death, but we were taking the stuff with absolute carelessness. One doesn’t think of measuring it as one would if one took it by hypodermic. One just takes a dose when one feels one needs it. After all, that’s the rule of nature. Eat when you're hungry. Nothing is worse for the health than settling down to a fixed ration of sO many meals a day. The grand old British principle of three meat meals has caused the supply of uric acid to exceed the demand in a most reprehensible manner. Ph…