252 The Diary of a Drug Fiend
We are playing a. game of chess in which nobody can
see more than two or three squares at once, and so it
has become impossible to form a coherent plan.
King Lamus is trying to train a number of selected
people to act as a sort of brain for the world in its
present state of cerebral collapse. He is teaching them
to co-ordinate the facts in a higher synthesis. The
suggestion is that of his old teacher, Prof. Henry Mauds-
ley, with whom he studied insanity. Herbert Spencer,
too, had a similar idea. But King Lamus is the first
to endeavour to make a practical effort to embody
this conception in a practical way.
I seem to have wandered a long way from our fare-
well dinner party; but my mind is still unable to
-concentrate as it should. Heroin and cocaine enable
one to attain a high degree of concentration artificially,
and this has to be paid for by a long period of reaction
in which one cannot fix one’s mind on a subject at all.
I am very much better than I was, but I get impatient
at times. It is so tedious to build oneself up on
biological lines, especially when one knows that a
-single dose of heroin or even morphine would make
one instantly the equal of the greatest minds in the
world. a
[~~ We had decided to take the prussic acid in our coffee.
I do not think we were afraid of death ; life had become
such an infinitely boring alternation between a period
of stimulation which failed to stimulate and of depression
which hardly even depressed.
There was no object in going on. It was simply not
worth while. On the other hand, there was a certain
hesitation about stopping because of the effort required.
We felt that even to die required energy. We tried to
supply this with Dutch courage, and we even succeeded
in producing a sort of hilarity. We never had a moment’s
doubt about carrying out our programme.
The waiter brought two Péches Melba; and as he
retired we found that King Lamus was standing at our
table. |