96 The Diary of a Drug Fiend
calculate what a wonderful time you can have on a
pound.
You remember how it goes—twenty grains one
penny-weight, three penny-weights one scruple—I
forget how many scruples one drachm, eight drachms
one ounce, twelve ounces one pound.
I’ve got it all wrong. I could never understand
English weights and measures. I have never met any
one who could. But the point is you could go on a
long time on one-eighth of a grain if you have a pound
of the stuff. ,
Well, this will put it all right for you. Fifteen grains
is one gramme, and a thousand grammes is a kilogramme,
and a kilogramme is two point two pounds. The
only thing I’m not sure about is whether it’s a sixteen-
ounce pound or a twelve-ounce pound. But I don’t
see what it matters anyway, if you’ve got a pound of
snow or H. you can go on for a long while, but apparently
it’s rather awkward orchestrating them.
Quain says that people accustomed to opium and
its derivatives can take an enormous amount of cocaine
without any bother. 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.
Physiology and economics, and, I should think, even
geology, combine to protest.
‘Now we were living an absolutely wholesome life.
We took a sniff of cocaine whenever the pace slackened
up, and one of heroin when the cocaine showed any
signs of taking the bit in its teeth.