Naked Lunch

by William Burroughs

  ‘And use that alcohol,’ I say slamming a spirit lamp down on the table.

  ‘You fucking can’t – wait – hungry junkies all the time black up my spoons with matches.… That’s all I need for pen Indef. the heat rumbles a black spoon in the trap.…

  ‘I thought you was quitting.… Wouldn’t feel right fucking up your cure.

  ‘Takes a lot of guts to kick a habit, kid.’

  Looking for veins in the thawing flesh. Hour-Glass of junk spills its last black grains into the kidneys.…

  ‘Heavily infected area,’ he muttered, shifting the tie up.

  ‘Death was their Culture Hero,’ said my Old Lady looking up from the Mayan Codices.…‘They got fire and speech and the corn seed from death.… Death turns into a maize seed.’

  The Ouab Days are upon us

  raw pealed winds of hate and mischance

  blew the shot.

  ‘Get those fucking dirty pictures out of here,’ I told her. The Old Timer Schmecker supported himself on a chair back, juiced and goof-balled … a disgrace to his blood.

  ‘What are you one of these goof-ball artists?’

  Yellow smells of skid row sherry and occluding liver drifted out of his clothes when he made the junky gesture throwing the hand out palm up to cope …

  smell of chili houses and dank overcoats and atrophied

  testicles.…

  He looked at me through the tentative, ectoplasmic flesh of cure … thirty pounds materialized in a month when you kick … soft pink putty that fades at the first silent touch of junk.… I saw it happen … ten pounds lost in ten minutes … standing there with the syringe in one hand … holding his pants up with the other.

  sharp reek of diseased metal.

  Walking in a rubbish heap to the sky … scattered gasoline fires … smoke hangs black and solid as excrement in the motionless air … smudging the white film of noon heat … D.L. walks beside me … a reflection of my toothless gums and hairless skull … flesh smeared over the rotting phosphorescent bones consumed by slow cold fires.… He carries an open can of gasoline and the smell of gasoline envelopes him.… Coming over a hill of rusty iron we meet a group of natives … flat two-dimension faces of scavenger fish.…

  ‘Throw the gasoline on them and light it.…

  QUICK …

  white flash … mangled insect screams …

  I woke up with the taste of metal in my mouth back from the dead

  trailing the colorless death smell

  afterbirth of a withered grey monkey

  phantom twinges of amputation …

  ‘Taxi boys waiting for a pickup,’ Eduardo said and died of an overdose in Madrid.…

  Powder trains burn back through pink convolutions of tumescent flesh … set off flash bulbs of orgasm … pinpoint photos of arrested motion … smooth brown side twisted to light a cigarette.…

  He stood there in a 1920 straw hat somebody gave him … soft mendicant words falling like dead birds in the dark street.…

  ‘No … No more … No mas …’

  A heaving sea of air hammers in the purple brown dusk tainted with rotten metal smell of sewer gas … young worker faces vibrating out of focus in yellow halos of carbide lanterns … broken pipes exposed.…

  ‘They are rebuilding the City.’

  Lee nodded absently.…‘Yes … Always …’

  Either way is a bad move to The East Wing.…

  If I knew I’d be glad to tell you.…

  ‘No good … no bueno … hustling himself.…’

  ‘No glot … C’lom Fliday’

  Tangier, 1959.

  Appendix

  Appendix

  The British Journal of Addiction Vol.53, No.2

  LETTER FROM A MASTER ADDICT TO DANGEROUS DRUGS

  August 3rd, 1956.

  Venice.

  Dear Doctor,

  Thanks for your letter. I enclose that article on the effects of various drugs I have used. I do not know if it is suitable for your publication. I have no objection to my name being used.

  No difficulty with drinking. No desire to use any drug. General health excellent. Please give my regards to Mr—. I use his system of exercises daily with excellent results.

  I have been thinking of writing a book on narcotic drugs if I could find a suitable collaborator to handle the technical end.

  Yours,

  WILLIAM BURROUGHS.

  The use of opium and opium derivatives leads to a state that defines limits and describes ‘addiction’ – (The term is loosely used to indicate anything one is used to or wants. We speak of addiction to candy, coffee, tobacco, warm weather, television, detective stories, crossword puzzles). So misapplied the term loses any useful precision of meaning. The use of morphine leads to a metabolic dependence on morphine. Morphine becomes a biologic need like water and the user may die if he is suddenly deprived of it. The diabetic will die without insulin, but he is not addicted to insulin. His need for insulin was not brought about by the use of insulin. He needs insulin to maintain a normal metabolism. The addict needs morphine to maintain a morphine metabolism, and so avoid the excruciatingly painful return to a normal metabolism.

  I have used a number of ‘narcotic’ drugs over a period of twenty years. Some of these drugs are addicting in the above sense. Most are not:

  Opiates. – Over a period of twelve years I have used opium, smoked and taken orally (injection in the skin causes abscesses. Injection in the vein is unpleasant and perhaps dangerous), heroin injected in skin, vein, muscle, sniffed (when no needle was available), morphine, dilaudid, pantopon, eukodol, paracodine, dionine, codeine, demerol, methodone. They are all habit forming in varying degree. Nor does it make much difference how the drug is administered, smoked, sniffed, injected, taken orally, inserted in rectal suppositories, the end result will be the same: addiction. And a smoking habit is as difficult to break as an intravenous injection habit. The concept that injection habits are particularly injurious derives from an irrational fear of needles – (‘Injections poison the blood stream’ – as though the blood stream were any less poisoned by substances absorbed from the stomach, the lungs or the mucous membrane). Demerol is probably less addicting than morphine. It is also less satisfying to the addict, and less effective as a pain killer. While a demerol habit is easier to break than a morphine habit, demerol is certainly more injurious to the health and specifically to the nervous system. I once used demerol for three months and developed a number of distressing symptoms: trembling hands (with morphine my hands are always steady), progressive loss of coordination, muscular contractions, paranoid obsessions, fear of insanity. Finally I contracted an opportune intolerance for demerol – no doubt a measure of self preservation – and switched to methodone. Immediately all my symptoms disappeared. I may add that demerol is quite as constipating as morphine, that it exerts an even more depressing effect on the appetite and the sexual functions, does not, however, contract the pupils. I have given myself thousands of injections over a period of years with unsterilized, in fact dirty, needles and never sustained an infection until I used demerol. Then I came down with a series of abscesses one of which had to be lanced and drained. In short demerol seems to me a more dangerous drug than morphine. Methodone is completely satisfying to the addict, an excellent pain killer, at least as addicting as morphine.

  I have taken morphine for acute pain. Any opiate that effectively relieves pain to an equal degree relieves withdrawal symptoms. The conclusion is obvious: Any opiate that relieves pain is habit forming, and the more effectively it relieves pain the more habit forming it is. The habit forming molecule, and the pain killing molecule of morphine are probably identical, and the process by which morphine relieves pain is the same process that leads to tolerance and addiction. Non habit forming morphine appears to be a latter day Philosopher’s Stone. On the other hand variations of apomorphine may prove extremely effective in controlling the withdrawal syndrome. But we should not expect this drug to be a pain kil
ler as well.

  The phenomena of morphine addiction are well known and there is no reason to go over them here. A few points, it seems to me, have received insufficient attention: The metabolic incompatibility between morphine and alcohol has been observed, but no one, so far as I know, has advanced an explanation. If a morphine addict drinks alcohol he experiences no agreeable or euphoric sensations. There is a feeling of slowly mounting discomfort, and the need for another injection. The alcohol seems to be shortcircuited perhaps by the liver. I once attempted to drink in a state of incomplete recovery from an attack of jaundice (I was not using morphine at this time). The metabolic sensation was identical. In one case the liver was partly out of action from jaundice, in the other preoccupied, literally, by a morphine metabolism. In neither case could it metabolize alcohol. If an alcoholic becomes addicted to morphine, morphine invariably and completely displaces alcohol. I have known several alcoholics who began using morphine. They were able to tolerate large doses of morphine immediately (1 grain to a shot) without ill effects, and in a matter of days stopped taking alcohol. The reverse never occurs. The morphine addict can not tolerate alcohol when he is using morphine or suffering from morphine withdrawal. The ability to tolerate alcohol is a sure sign of disintoxication. In consequence alcohol can never be substituted for morphine directly. Of course a disintoxicated addict may start drinking and become an alcoholic.

  During withdrawal the addict is acutely aware of his surroundings. Sense impressions are sharpened to the point of hallucination. Familiar objects seem to stir with a writhing furtive life. The addict is subject to a barrage of sensations external and visceral. He may experience flashes of beauty and nostalgia, but the overall impression is extremely painful – (Possibly his sensations are painful because of their intensity. A pleasurable sensation may become intolerable after a certain intensity is reached.)

  I have noticed two special reactions of early withdrawal: (1) Everything looks threatening; (2) mild paranoia. The doctors and nurses appear as monsters of evil. In the course of several cures, I have felt myself surrounded by dangerous lunatics. I talked with one of Dr. Dent’s patients who had just undergone disintoxication for a pethidine habit. He reported an identical experience, told me that for 24 hours the nurses and the doctor ‘seemed brutal and repugnant.’ And everything looked blue. And I have talked with other addicts who experienced the same reactions. Now the psychological basis for paranoid notions during withdrawal is obvious. The specific similarity of these reactions indicates a common metabolic origin. The similarity between withdrawal phenomena and certain states of drug intoxication is striking. Hashish, Bannisteria Caapi (Harmaline), Peyote (Mescaline) produce states of acute sensitivity, with hallucinatory viewpoint. Everything looks alive. Paranoid ideas are frequent. Bannnisteria Caapi intoxication specifically reproduces the state of withdrawal. Everything looks threatening. Paranoid ideas are marked especially with overdose. After taking Bannisteria Caapi, I was convinced that the Medicine Man and his apprentice were conspiring to murder me. It seems that metabolic states of the body can reproduce the effects of various drugs.

  In the USA heroin addicts are receiving an involuntary reduction cure from the pushers who progressively dilute their wares with milk, sugar and barbiturates. As a result many of the addicts who seek treatment are lightly addicted so they can be completely disintoxicated in a short time (7 to 8 days). They recover rapidly without medication. Meanwhile any tranquillizing, anti-allergic, or sedative drug, will afford some relief, especially if injected. The addict feels better if he knows that some alien substance is coursing through his blood stream. Tolserol, Thorazine and related ‘tranquillizers,’ every variety of barbiturate, Chloral and Paraldehyde, antihistamines, cortisone, reserpine, even shock (can lobotomy be far behind?) have all been used with results usually described as ‘encouraging.’ My own experience suggests that these results be accepted with some reserve. Of course, symptomatic treatment is indicated, and all these drugs (with possible exception of the drug most commonly used: barbiturates) have a place in the treatment of the withdrawal syndrome. But none of these drugs is in itself the answer to withdrawal. Withdrawal symptoms vary with individual metabolism and physical type. Pigeon chested, hay fever and asthma liable individuals suffer greatly from allergic symptoms during withdrawal: running nose, sneezing, smarting, watering eyes, difficulty in breathing. In such cases cortisone and antihistamine drugs may afford definite relief. Vomiting could probably be controlled with anti-nausea drugs like thorazine.

  I have undergone ten ‘cures’ in the course of which all these drugs were used. I have taken quick reductions, slow reductions, prolonged sleep, apomorphine, antihistamines, a French system involving a worthless product known as ‘amorphine,’ everything but shock. (I would be interested to hear results of further experiments with shock treatment on somebody else.) The success of any treatment depends on the degree and duration of addiction, the stage of withdrawal (drugs which are effective in late or light withdrawal can be disastrous in the acute phase), individual symptoms, health, age, etc. A method of treatment might be completely ineffective at one time, but give excellent results at another. Or a treatment that does me no good may help someone else. I do not presume to pass any final judgements, only to report my own reactions to various drugs and methods of treatment.

  Reduction Cures. – This is the commonest form of treatment, and no method yet discovered can entirely replace it in cases of severe addiction. The patient must have some morphine. If there is one rule that applies to all cases of addiction this is it. But the morphine should be withdrawn as quickly as possible. I have taken slow reduction cures and in every case the result was discouragement and eventual relapse. Imperceptible reduction is likely to be endless reduction. When the addict seeks cure, he has, in most cases, already experienced withdrawal symptoms many times. He expects an unpleasant ordeal and he is prepared to endure it. But if the pain of withdrawal is spread over two months instead of ten days he may not be able to endure it. It is not the intensity but the duration of pain that breaks the will to resist. If the addict habitually takes any quantity, however small, of any opiate to alleviate the weakness, insomnia, boredom, restlessness, of late withdrawal, the withdrawal symptoms will be prolonged indefinitely and complete relapse is almost certain.

  Prolonged Sleep. – The theory sounds good. You go to sleep and wake up cured. Industrial doses of chloral hydrate, barbiturates, thorazine, only produced a nightmare state of semi-consciousness. Withdrawal of sedation, after 5 days, occasioned a severe shock. Symptoms of acute morphine deprivation supervened. The end result was a combined syndrome of unparalleled horror. No cure I ever took was as painful as this allegedly painless method. The cycle of sleep and wakefulness is always deeply disturbed during withdrawal. To further disturb it with massive sedation seems contraindicated to say the least. Withdrawal of morphine is sufficiently traumatic without adding to it withdrawal of barbiturates. After two weeks in the hospital (five days sedation, ten days ‘rest’) I was still so weak that I fainted when I tried to walk up a slight incline. I consider prolonged sleep the worst possible method of treating withdrawal.

  Antihistamines. – The use of antihistamines is based on the allergic theory of withdrawal. Sudden withdrawal of morphine precipitates an overproduction of histamine with consequent allergic symptoms. (In shock resulting from traumatic injury with acute pain large quantities of histamine are released in the blood. In acute pain as in addiction toxic doses of morphine are readily tolerated. Rabbits, who have a high histamine content in the blood, are extremely resistant to morphine.) My own experience with antihistamines has not been conclusive. I once took a cure in which only antihistamines were used, and the results were good. But I was lightly addicted at the time, and had been without morphine for 72 hours when the cure started. I have frequently used antihistamines since then for withdrawal symptoms with disappointing results. In fact they seem to increase my depression and irritability (I do not suffer
from typical allergic symptoms)

  Apomorphine. – Apomorphine is certainly the best method of treating withdrawal that I have experienced. It does not completely eliminate the withdrawal symptoms, but reduces them to an endurable level. The acute symptoms such as stomach and leg cramps, convulsive or maniac states are completely controlled. In fact apomorphine treatment involves less discomfort than a reduction cure. Recovery is more rapid and more complete. I feel that I was never completely cured of the craving for morphine until I took apomorphine treatment. Perhaps the ‘psychological’ craving for morphine that persists after a cure is not psychological at all, but metabolic. More potent variations of the apomorphine formula might prove qualitatively more effective in treating all forms of addiction.

  Cortisone. – Cortisone seems to give some relief especially when injected intravenously.

  Thorazine. – Provides some relief from withdrawal symptoms, but not much. Side effects of depression, disturbances of vision, indigestion offset dubious benefits.

  Reserpine. – I never noticed any effect whatever from this drug except a slight depression.

  Tolserol. – Negligible results.

  Barbiturates. – It is common practice to prescribe barbiturates for the insomnia of withdrawal. Actually the use of barbiturates delays the return of normal sleep, prolongs the whole period of withdrawal, and may lead to relapse. (The addict is tempted to take a little codeine or paregoric with his nembutal. Very small quantities of opiates, that would be quite innocuous for a normal person, immediately re-establish addiction in a cured addict.) My experience certainly confirms Dr. Dent’s statement that barbiturates are contraindicated.

  Chloral and paraldehyde. – Probably preferable to barbiturates if a sedative is necessary, but most addicts will vomit up paraldehyde at once. I have also tried, on my own initiative, the following drugs during withdrawal: