Diary of a Drug Fiend

74 The Diary of a Drug Fiend bathed in an ocean of exceeding calm. My mind was very active, but only so within peculiar limits. I did not seem to be directing the current of my thoughts. In an ordinary way that fact would have annoyed me intensely. But now it merely made me curious. I tried, as an experiment, to fix my mind on something definite. I was technically able to do so, but at the same time I was aware that I considered the effort not worth making. I noticed, too, that my thoughts were uniformly pleasant. Curiosity impelled me to fix my mind on ideas which are normally the source of writation and worry. There was no difficulty in doing so, but the bitterness had disappeared. I went over incidents in the past which I had almost forgotten by virtue of that singular mental process which protects the mind from annoyance. I discovered that this loss of memory was apparent, and not real. I recollected every detail with the most minute exactitude. But the most vexatious and humiliating items meant nothing to me any more. I took the same pleasure in recalling them as one has — in reading a melancholy tale. I might almost go so far as to say that the unpleasant incidents were prefer- able to the others. The reason 1s, I think, that they leave a deeper mark on the mind. Our souls have invented our minds, so to speak, with the object of registering conscious experiences, and therefore the more deeply an ex- perience is felt the better our minds are carrying out the intention of our souls. “ Forsitan hac olim memintsse juvabtt,” says AEneas in Virgil when recounting his hardships. (Quaint, by the way! I haven't thought of a Latin tag a dozen times since I left school. Drugs, like old age, strip off one’s recent memories, and leave bare one’s forgotten ideas.) _The most deeply seated instinct in us is our craving for experience. And that is why the efforts of the