Diary of a Drug Fiend

King Lamus Intervenes 249 sing remark However, I could see that he was very fortable ‘and glad to get away from our table. We had ordered a wonderful dinner; but, of course, vawe couldn’t eat anything. The mockery of having all | those expensive dishes brought, one after the other, and taken away again untouched, was irritating at } first, and then it began to be amusing. ely icipating in some weird ceremony ans. The thought mind that we already died, that cking welcome ades, the offering we were unabjé to partake. d yet, between us and the unknown was the act of drinking e contents of the little bottlein my waistcoat pocket. It was nearly an hour and a half since we had some heroin, and already the loathsome fumes of abstention were suffocating us. We had as much as our bodies could tolerate. We didn’t want any more actively. It would do us no good to take more, but nature had already begun her process of eliminating the poison. In the body, morphine and heroin become oxydised, and it is the resulting poisons, not the drugs themselves, i“ that are responsible for the appalling effects. Thus the body begins to give off these products through the secretions; therefore the nose begins to run; there are prolonged foul sweats; there is a smell and a taste which cannot be called unpleasant even, it can only be called abominable in the proper sense of that word: that which is repugnant to man. It is so detestable as to be unendurable. One might get relief by cleaning one’s teeth or by having a Turkish bath, but the energy to do such things is lacking. But if you take a fresh dose of the drug, it puts a War temporary stop to the efforts of nature to eliminate it. That is why it is such a vicious circle; and these | premonitory symptoms of abstinence are merely the