THE SCOTSMAN

Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland

23 January 1923

(page 7)

CURRENT LITERATURE.

NEW FICTION.

The Diary of a Drug Fiend (7s. 6d. net. London: Collins), by Aleister Crowley, is put forward as a true story. The author himself characterises it as also a terrible story, but a story of hope and of beauty none the less. Following Dante, the progressive scenes are not inappropriately headed Paradiso, Inferno, and Purgatorio. Cocaine and heroin are the drugs, and in the first rapture of indulgence therein everything is transmuted as by heavenly alchemy into a spiritual beatitude. Too soon the over-inflated bubble bursts, everything palls, and the whole virtue of a dose comes to be that it simply dulls the pain of being without. When the craving is at its worst, it reduced the indulgers to a state of bestial degradation. The Purgatorio section, of course, describes the attempt at a cure. The Abbey of Thelema at Telepylus, where the treatment is administered, is declared to be a real place, and appears to be located somewhere in the isles of Greece. It takes a lot of faith to believe that the plan outlined can meet with any success.