Diary of a Drug Fiend

The Voice of Virtue 281 Standard knows that. I believe it’s written in golden letters round the chancel in Westminster Abbey. If it isn’t, it ought to be. “Now don’t worry. And above all things, don’t get a fit of repentance and take too little to-day and to- ' morrow. If you do, you'll have another relapse. I know it sounds as though I were contradicting myself. Make the most of it, I don’t care. I’m going to do it again in the following elegant manner. “T want you to get the whole subject of heroin out of your mind; and that is the reason why [ insist so strongly on your keeping a record of every time you take it. It’s a psychological paradox that the best way to forget about a thing is to make a memorandum of it. “Now, good-bye, and come to dinner to-night at the studio. Perhaps you'll feel like dancing.”’ He went off with an airy wave of the hand. When we came back from the dance the porter told us that a lady and gentleman had called to see us. They hadn’t left their names. They would call again in the morning. It struck me as curious ; but I gave the matter little enough thought. The fact is that I was in rather a bad temper. I had used a good deal of heroin off and on during the last few days, and it had certainly not cost me anything to cut off the cocaine. Morphine and heroin give one a physical craving; but the pull of cocaine is principally moral and when one is taking H. one doesn’t care such a lot about taking it. ‘But that night, raw as it was, I almost made up my mind to drive back and try to get a little snow for a change. _ We were getting over the heroin, the first stage of - diminution, without too much suffering. But there was something exceedingly tedious about the process. We had had a very pleasant evening ; but I couldn’t ‘ help comparing it with the same sort of thing in honey- moon days. The sparkle had gone out of the champagne of life.