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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Saturday, 18 February 1922
7.0 A.M. Woke fresh and fit, though very uncomfortable, the bed and my sheet being drenched with sweat. I had no idea—despite much experience of malaria in such places as Rangoon—that such quantities of perspiration could be produced by so small a person! The quality offers no prospect of my betting a contract with Houbignet.
12.0. I slept off and on all morning while my sheet dried on the radiator.
1.34. Big. A tremendous relief, though I can hardly say from what! It seems as if my symptoms were becoming omniform. I have had dyspnoea, fever, bronchitis, asthma, rheumatic pains, tendency to headache, etc etc. The trouble is that if it were not for knowing about heroin, I should have accepted any one of these as the natural lot of mankind, and treated it accordingly. As it is, I suspect “suppression” to be at the root of everything abnormal.
2.01. Medium. Heavy rain: it would be stupid to go out walking, as I have not a Burberry or a change of clothes, and in view of two nights of violent fever. Yet I suspect myself of exaggerating the rain, as an excuse for relaxing my regimen. This is all absurdly over-honest; the good point is the proof that I am taking the case seriously, the bad one that it shows a tendency to scare. But in a case of this port it is an error on the right side to be slow to make excuses.
2.34. This is true, although at first sight silly; that all unpleasant symptoms, diverse as they may be, depart unceremoniously on the arrival of Heroin. The converse proposition (is it converse, obverse, contrapositive or what? My logic is rusty) thus appears tenable: that the symptoms arise from a single cause, the withdrawal of the drug. Why then do I not get more symptoms still? Obviously enough: the action of the heroin is to prevent one’s natural tendencies to illness from manifesting. I can well understand (in this light) the claim made for opium and its congeners that addicts are practically immune from most types of disease. If, then, one could be sure of not abusing such drugs, it might be a tenable thesis that their use prolonged life. (Excuse me if I distrust the above remarks! May not such thoughts be the scouts of my soul’s enemies?! I might easily change my plan of campaign, aiming to limit my doses instead of suppressing them. The next step would be to employ casuistry to enlarge the limit, or at least to become careless so that I slid back into the way of taking a dose whenever I felt like it.
I think it very important for humanity to set down all these subtleties; it has never been properly done, either by an artist or a psychologist. I am not sorry that I undertook the experiment. These mental analyses have analogies in other departments. They will be extremely useful to the young Yogi, for example.
2.53. Medium. I must make a point of analyzing the precise motives that operate the actual decision at any moment as to when and how much I take.
I observe, by the way, that the above entry is accompanied by a moral collapse. Such analysis strikes me as damnable difficult; and I instinctively cry out for a stenographer to save me the trouble of writing, and a dose of cocaine to brace me up to the intellectual fatigue.
2.58. I see one difficulty about this 'cure' which reminds me of Russell and his “zig-zagginess”. Suppose I succeed in recovering moral tone. I am liable to discover it to be my 'duty' to spurn this campaign as selfish and trivial, and to sacrifice myself to humanity (or something pompous and piggish of the kind) by going off to establish the Law, aided by adequate doses. I can think of about a million artful arguments of this kind. The sole rebuttal is—as in learning concentration of any sort—to stick to the letter of the law without lust of result. I must emphasize this danger to the utmost; I have seen too often in the past how one can become obsessed by some ordered mass of ideas which are utterly irrefutable, and yet are the flimsiest falsehoods when once they are set aside. The moral quality required to do so is Resolute Stupidity; it is his possession of this that has made the Englishman master of the world. It is the infiltration of the poison of intelligence that is reducing him to a national rabbit. Tommy Adkins is immeasurably superior to a Chink like Confucius; if not, by what right does Brittania rule the waves?
I have made one gigantic stride toward recovery. I have regained my belief in myself as a World-Force. Despite the general indifference to things at large which still leaves me without magnetism, I am genuinely interested in this record and think it will prove one of the most important documents offered to psycho-pathology.
3.26. I am calculating the best way to use my last two doses. I feel no need of anything, as on previous days at this stage; and the reason in taking them is as before. Yet I am haunted by the anguish of further diminution. I think: Hadn’t I better take two big doses as late as possible, so as to suffer less before Reveille tomorrow? As against this: hadn’t I better advance the time and diminish the amounts, so as to force myself to fight through as much suffering as possible—get used to it, like eels to being skinned?
For as I have hitherto managed to keep strictly to my programme, I am getting to feel confident that my pride will help me out in a pinch.
The final argument is this: let me be careful not to be over-careful. There is danger in attaching too much importance to the matter. On the other hand, no danger is so great as over-confidence; if I get careless, good-night! The bottom of the business is the dear old occult bottom—to work without lust of result. One must act with all the ardor and integrity possible; yet with indifference, as if one had no interest in the upshot.
3.38. Medium. I took this dose with very marked reluctance. I am tempted to stop brutally. "To hell with the beastly stuff" is my reaction. I am quite uncertain whether to regard this attitude as a symptom of moral convalescence or as a subtly false attempt of the subconscious craving to trick me into rashness. It is certainly wise to repudiate both claims and to maintain the letter of the Law.
While wring this, I observe a powerful undertow of craving. The effect of the dose seems to have been to make me eager to continue the drug with enthusiasm. (This effect, by the way, is exceptionally well marked when taking cocaine.) Now, what may one deduce from this? Is it that the stimulus, consciously resented, is subconsciously demanded? It seems that the gain in power, the return towards the normal, gives one confidence in one’s mastery over oneself? In other words, is one ————.
There is a marked confusion of thought in my mind on this point; I feel acutely that I am not expressing myself well, and that I am not clear about what I wish to express. This suggests that I must be "drilling near the nerve" of some complex. My mind is simply bewildered. I don’t know how to formulate my question properly. I am aware of a sort of shame or embarrassment. I seems as if my mind wanted to evade the analysis, and took refuge in deliberate obfuscation. This is of course what regularly happens to the average man whenever confronted by any moral problem. He thinks with confused consternation on such subjects as religion, morality and disease, because his fear of what might happen to him is so vast and so vague. This inhibition has been responsible for all the ignorance which has disgraced the history of the race.
3.58. Medium. This final dose was taken with a certain anguish (I use this word as equivalent to 'angoise') which I instantly recognized as saying: "all very well for today: but what about tomorrow when the limit is four doses?"
This sounds absurd as three doses have so far put me all right. But I am thinking of the question of cumulative counter-poisoning, and I feel a passionate impulse to break down at this very moment, to "go on the bust, regardless". Yet the thought of taking another dose is extremely repugnant. The last has not made me feel any better; it has simply dizzied me, and filled me with querulous impatience. It has stopped raining, I think; I will go out and if too wet, try what a Mandarin and an hour with a cue will do for me.
4.14. Just a note before going out:—I am not nearly "nice drunk", I am glad to say. But I am tremendously encouraged by the thought that this record will be a model which may serve men to work out their own mastery of "habits" without compulsion or alien assistance.
5.40. It was too wet to walk: I call to witness the umbrellas of the indigenous. I went book-buying and proof inspecting; in the shop I nearly collapsed. Fresh air restored me. I went billiard playing and Mandarin-drinking. My billiards was again admirably astonishing. I was then overcome by sleepiness; decided to go home and lie down. I had a violent impulse to vomit; but after a demi-semi-quaver, I felt perfectly well again and the somnolence resumed its sway.
5.55. It is worthy of remark that my regiment seems to have restored my "drug-virginity" so called by writers on the subject. The fact is that most of the fixed ideas about drugs are superstitions. I have long observed this fact with regard to a great many. But the more I learn, the larger is the rubbish-heap of accepted statements. For instance, with ether, hashish, mescal, opium-smoking and morphine, I find no tendency to habit whatever. More still, I am unable to force myself to use these drugs at all, except on the rarest occasions. Yet I have nothing but the most pleasant and profitable experiences in connection with them. With heroin & cocaine, on the contrary, I have not much to thank them for; and there has been a good deal of annoyance connected with them. Yet it is for these and these only that I hanker. I begin to have a grave suspicion that there is a masochistic complex at the bottom of all this: a "will to suffer", integral with the sense of "sin" which accounts for the popularity of humiliating creeds such as Christianity in all its forms among degenerate races. (I include such infantile wish-fulfillment-phantasm reactions as "Christian Science" among these morbid phenomenon.
6.30. I have been noticing in myself a tendency to irritability and suspiciousness. It is not very acute or very persistent; but it is sufficient to be evidence of a state of mind exceptionally foreign to my assertion—acquired habit of thought. It has appeared by fits and starts during some months.
6.44. Programme for Sunday.
Reveille 1.0 P.M.
Curfew 3.0 P.M.
Doses 4
As adjuvants: strychnine appears of great use physically. I think I will try emphasizing this in the two or three hours before Reveille. Alcohol is a decided moral aid; but I suspect it of lessening physiological resistance unless one is careful to restrict it scope to assisting appetite and digestion or promoting sleep. I am somewhat astonished to notice how prolonged by lethargy is. The impulse is to be alarmed; but Nature knows best. This is Her way, presumably, of replenishing the resistance.
7.00. A curious incident took place before dinner. After leaving my room, I thought of my supply of cocaine—was it safe? I went back, assured myself of its integrity—and that of the servants in respect thereof—and put it back with elaborate precautions against a grain of it reaching my anatomy. I now wonder whether this action was dictated by the subconscious wish to take some.
8.8. I dined slowly on light food in great moderation and was instantly impelled to violent and voluminous vomiting. Painless, almost pleasant. It leaves me, like the previous entry, doubtful as to whether this, too, is not a "device of the demon". Yet there is ample explanation elsewhere I was reading the life of Lord Russell of Killowen by R. Barry O’Brien. Probably the sickness saved my life.
8.50. I feel as if another shivering fit were about due, so I get to bed and take 3 gr. Quinine.
9.50. The shivering was avoided. I feel generally washed-out, neither tired, sleepy, hungry nor anything else. My thoughts are similarly colourless. For instance, I wonder, without interest, whether I might die before morning.
11.36. I now feel quiet and comfortable but rather bored.
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