|
Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Friday, 8 October 1920
Leah [Leah Hirsig] to Palermo with Poupée.
7.00 p.m. I am about to try an experiment. When I start cocaine, I find that there is always an excuse (on the Highest Grounds, like an Englishman) for going on to the physiological limit. I am going to say, I begin now and will stop at 9.00 p.m. whatever happens. If I fail, I ought to be kicked round Cefalu 333 times.
10.15 p.m. All right so far, feeling fit, eager, wakeful, poetry-mad. I don't hanker after snow [cocaine], in a drawer at my right side; but I want water—mouth dry (from a cold, I think). I do feel though as if stopping were somehow unnatural, as I do on leaving even a very bad play before the end of the last act. But this thought came only now, an hour and a quarter after stopping cocaine, and a minute and a quarter after finishing my additional stanzas to the Introit to the Leah poems.
|