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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Wednesday, 15 February 1922
1 1/2 tablets “Dial Cina.” Slept till 9:30. Cafe Croissant. Struggled hard to get up but relapsed and slept till after 11. Delightful dreams.
12. Walked (lunch on ham, milk etc) till about 3:30. Very tired. A nap. The breath of the forest hit me like a club, the moment I left the town. I felt cured of everything. I broke into a series of storms of sobbing; great relief.
4 P.M. “Storm-fiend” [asthma] possessed me with terrible and unendurable violence.
4.4. A big sniff of Heroin. Instant relief but very partial. The residual symptoms abated slowly, and I was normal, nearly, at 4:17. From then I got worse again slowly.
4:30. Small dose of heroin
4:40. d[itt]o d[itt]o [Small dose of heroin]
5:15. Medium d[itt]o [Dose of heroin]
5:30. Big dose. I am not suffering: the excuses are that I want to be very fit to write this record, though I have practically finished for the present, and that I may as well take plenty before Curfew at 7.0, so as to make it less difficult to do without it till Reveille at 1.0 P.M. tomorrow.
I may find it wise to limit the number of doses during the “Open Season” and to make it illegal to take a dose at all unless the Storm-Fiend is actually on the job.
My general idea is to increase the Close Season daily by a space of one or two hours thus automatically limiting the Open Season, and reaching a point when a whole physiological cycle of 24 hours. That, in my theory, would be the critical point of the cure.
6:12 PM. It seems to be no effort at all to stop Cocaine right away; one returns to it from the moral impulse to “get going.” This impulse appears to depend on external circumstances. Accidental necessities to be at one’s best. (I am now, by the way, slightly intoxicated—positively pleased, not merely negatively relieved—by the 5 doses of the last 2 hours. I am combating any excess of hunger for the drug by Strychnine, doses of 2 mgs, and by eating. The most important part of the treatment is to keep the mind distracted. The attacks of hunger seem to be partly caused by the mental obsession, and prove transient of the attention is attracted in any way.
I propose to deal with the most distressing symptoms which I have explained hitherto, viz., inability to sleep at the proper hours (with tendency to over-do sleep during the daytime) on the following principles.
1. Use of the IX° formula.
2. Hard physical exercise every day, with a walk of at least half an hour after dinner.
3. Hydrotherapy if to be procured. In any case, hot bath with eau-de-cologne rub on retiring. Cold ditto on waking.
4. Alcohol on retiring.
5. Soporific in full dose at once, unless asleep within 30 minutes of lying down.
My plan for tomorrow is this:
Forced wakening at 8:30. Breakfast. Bath. Walk. Lunch in forest. No heroin till 1 P.M. Doses at pleasure till curfew at 6.0 P.M.
6:30. Medium dose Heroin. This was a real indulgence, in the worst sense of the word. It has occurred very frequently that I have taken a dose for reasons at present utterly unfathomable. (This is a confession indeed, from me, who claims to be the foremost living psychologist!) There is not the slightest discomfort to be removed, or the faintest wish to reach some still superior state. It is an absolutely perverse impulse; I can only compare it with similar obfuscation—phenomena common enough in the matter of sex. Part of the explanation may be that I feel (rather, there is a physiological instinct in the animal) an absurd sense of injury. An indignant assertion that it has a natural right to be active and pleasantly divorced for a certain proportion of the 24 hours.
6:45. Small dose. Taken partly to prove to myself that I was not alarmed by the reflection above set down.
I note certain pathological points.
1. Increased secretions, especially mucous, indicate the physical need of the drug.
2. Slight tendency to manifest the bronchitis which introduced me to heroin.
3. I think my eyesight to be degenerated rapidly since I began the experiment. Oculists, however, will not admit this; they claim that I am “doing as well as can be expected” or even a bit better.
4. There has been a constantly increasing indifference to matters of ordinary health, cleanliness and vanity. I seem hardly to know what the state of affairs is, as to defaecation, etc.
5. There are numerous very alarming mental symptoms, but all really reduce to one only, the feeling that nothing is worth while. It is a sort of “philosophical laziness”, rather like Falstaff’s deafness “a scurvy slackness!”
6:55 P.M. Medium dose. Excuse, a perverted sense of duty. The clock had struck 7. There are several audible clocks in the town and I wanted to assert my right to take a last dose between the competing chimes.
I am now “nice drunk” as Alostrael [Leah Hirsig] would say. The day had been one of anguish. Poupée peeped from every alley in the forest. I think of her now without the least tendency to emotion of any kind at all; it is even hard to remember that I ever regretted her for an instant.
7:7 PM. An extraordinary incident has occurred. I had put a ‘choice cigar’ in my mouth as the safest place intending to smoke it after dinner. In my mental absorption, I lit it, discovering the fact only now when it is more than half smoked. This sounds an absurd trifle; but it reveals a condition as serious as an actor’s who should unconsciously declaim “to be or not to be” in a scene or so too early. I am economising these cigars as I cannot renew the supply in this town.
I am now not only “nice drunk” but “very drunk”, not far short of “bloody drunk”. My eyes are swimming, my senses singing: I feel “floppy” and I radiate beatitude of the most beatific blessedness. My middle name is Benedict; they call me Felix for short. Instead of Bildad and his friends, I am surrounded by my cronies, Sat, Chit and Ananda. I am enjoying a formless ecstasy, unsurpassed by anything in my experience. “Be strong, then canst thou bear more rapture.” Yes: the day has been a success; I have managed to mix my Moly à la Nepenthe sauce Amrita just right for once. I never drank a better bottle of nectar. It is all to the good that I can put no name to my rejoicing.
Let me cleanse my animal "Asperges me, Domine, etc" and go downstairs. “It is my will to eat and drink that my body may be fortified thereby that I may accomplish the Great Work.” En avant, Pegase!
10:10 P.M. The dinner, all unpleasing as was the menu, proved excellent. I had a glass of Nuits, perfect; and a Vieux Marc ditto. I went to No. 4 and No. 6, to look for a female primate, genus Homo Rapiens; the best of the banal bunch was a short, sturdy creature called Paulette. I hardly feel justified in robbing Pierrete to pay her! I drank a Vieux Marc and a Cointreau to pay my footing [?].
I feel wonderfully well and deliciously tired: I am not even annoyed at the rain. I shall not be sorry to go out and get soaked to the skin and skip about in the slimy slush of the sodden forest. I am terribly sleepy and have nothing on my mind. Except this: my ambition to make this record “read well” may persuade my animal to simulate all sorts of unnecessary tortures!
Shame! I thought I had overcome that ‘last inpurity of noble mind!’ Well, let me go to sleep over the “Bourgeois gentilhomme.” I seem, by the way, to be the total antithesis of M. Jourdain. I am noble, poor, and totally disillusioned on all points. I have even ceased to protest against the fact that every step in evolution is inseparable from spasms of stupid agony: and I don’t “want” anything. My will is at last—so it seems—free from all lust of result.
10:26. I compose myself to Molière.
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