Diary of a Drug Fiend

by Aleister Crowley

  So blood wrenches its pain

  Sardonic through heart and brain.

  Every separate nerve

  Awake and alert, on a curve

  Whose asymptote’s name is never

  In a hyperbolic “for ever!”

  A bitten and burning snake

  Striking its venom within it,

  As if it might serve to slake

  The pain for the tithe of a minute.

  Awake, for ever awake!

  Awake as one never is

  While sleep is a possible end,

  Awake in the void, the abyss

  Whose thirst is an echo of this

  That martyrs, world without end,

  (World without end, Amen!)

  The man that falters and yields

  For the proverb’s month and an hour

  To the lure of the snow-starred fields

  Where the opium poppy’s aflower.

  Only the prick of a needle

  Charged from a wizard well!

  Is this sufficient to wheedle

  A soul from heaven to hell?

  Was man’s spirit weaned

  From fear of its ghosts and gods

  To fawn at the feet of a fiend ?

  Is it such terrible odds, –

  The heir of ages of wonder,

  The crown of earth for an hour,

  The master of tide and thunder

  Against the juice of a flower?

  Aye in the roar and the rattle

  Of all the armies of sin,

  This is the only battle

  He never was known to win.

  Slave to the thirst – not thirst

  As here it is weakly written,

  Not thirst in the brain black-bitten,

  In the soul more sorely smitten!

  One dare not think of the worst!

  Beyond the raging and raving

  Hell of the physical craving

  Lies, in the brain benumbed,

  At the end of time and space,

  An abyss, unmeasured, unplumbed –

  The haunt of a face!

  She it is, she, that found me

  In the morphia honeymoon;

  With silk and steel she bound me,

  In her poisonous milk she drowned me,

  Even now her arms surround me,

  Stifling me into the swoon

  That still – but oh, how rarely! –

  Comes at the thrust of the needle,

  Steadily stares and squarely,

  Nor needs to fondle and wheedle

  Her slave agasp for a kiss,

  Hers whose horror is his

  That knows that viper womb,

  Speckled and barred with black

  On its rusty amber scales,

  Is his tomb –

  The straining, groaning, rack

  On which he wails – he wails!

  Her cranial dome is vaulted,

  Her mad Mongolian eyes

  Aslant with the ecstasies

  Of things immune, exalted

  Far beyond stars and skies,

  Slits of amber and jet –

  Her snout for the quarry set

  Fleshy and heavy and gross,

  Bestial, broken across,

  And below it her mouth that drips

  Blood from the lips

  That hide the fangs of a snake,

  Drips on venomous udders

  Mountainous flanks that fret,

  And the spirit sickens and shudders

  At the hint of a worse thing yet.

  Olya! the golden bait

  Barbed with infinite pain,

  Fatal, fanatical mate

  Of a poisoned body and brain!

  Olya, the name that leers

  Its lecherous longing and knavery,

  Whispers in crazing ears

  The secret spell of her slavery.

  Horror indeed intense,

  Seduction ever intenser,

  Swinging the smoke of sense

  From the bowl of a smouldering censer!

  Behind me, behind and above,

  She stands, that mirror of love.

  Her fingers are supple-jointed;

  Her nails are polished and pointed,

  And tipped with spurs of gold:

  With them she rowels the brain.

  Her lust is critical, cold;

  And her Chinese cheeks are pale,

  As she daintily picks, profane

  With her octopus lips, and the teeth

  Jagged and black beneath,

  Pulp and blood from a nail.

  One swift prick was enough

  In days gone by to invoke her

  She was incarnate love

  In the hours when I first awoke her.

  Little by little I found

  The truth of her, stripped of clothing,

  Bitter beyond all bound,

  Leprous beyond all loathing.

  Black, the plague of the pit,

  Her pustules visibly fester,

  Cancerous kisses that bit

  As the asp caressed her.

  Dragon of lure and dread,

  Tiger of fury and lust,

  The quick in chains to the dead,

  The slime alive in the dust,

  Brazen shame like a flame,

  An orgy of pregnant pollution

  With hate beyond aim or name –

  Orgasm, death, dissolution!

  Know you now why her eyes

  So fearfully glaze, beholding

  Terrors and infamies

  Like filthy flowers unfolding?

  Laughter widowed of ease,

  Agony barred from sadness,

  Death defeated of peace,

  Is she not madness?

  She waits for me, lazily leering,

  As moon goes murdering moon;

  The moon of her triumph is nearing;

  She will have me wholly soon.

  Who have missed the morphia craving,

  Cry scorn if I call you brothers,

  Curl lip at my maniac raving,

  Fools, seven times beguiled,

  You have not known her? Well!

  There was never a need she smiled

  To harry you into hell

  Morphia is but one

  Spark of its secular fire.

  She is the single sun –

  Type of all desire!

  All that you would, you are –

  And that is the crown of a craving.

  You are slaves of the wormwood star.

  Analysed, reason is raving.

  Feeling, examined, is Pain.

  What heaven were to hope for a doubt of it!

  Life is anguish, insane;

  And death is – not a way out of it

  “Olya,” too, reminds me of myself. I have a morbid wish to be an impossible monster of cruelty and wickedness.

  Lamus had told me that long ago. He said it was the phantasm which summed up my longing to – “revert to type”. La nostalgie de la boue. Cockie lost all his dignity. He pleaded for just one sniff. We weren’t really very bad, but the description of the thirst in that horrible poem had made us feel thirsty.

  “My dear man,” said Lamus very brutally. “I’m not a dope peddler. You’ve come to the wrong shop.”

  Cockie’s head was drooping, and his eyes were glassy. But the need of dope drove him desperately to try every dodge.

  “Hang it all,” he said with a little flash of spirit. “You encouraged us to go on,”

  “Certainly,” admitted L
amus, “and now, I’m encouraging you to stop.”

  “I thought you believed in do what you like; you’re always saying it.”

  “I beg your pardon,” came the sharp retort. “I never said anything of the kind. I said, ‘Do what thou wilt,’ and I say it again. But that’s a horse of quite a different colour.”

  “But we need the stuff,” pleaded Peter. “We’ve got to have it. Why did you induce us to take it?”

  “Why,” he laughed subtly, “it’s my will to want you to do your will.”

  “Yes, and I want the stuff.”

  “Acute psychologist as you are, Sir Peter, you have failed to grasp my meaning. I fear I express myself badly.”

  Cockie was boiling inwardly, yet he was so weak and faint that he was like a lamb. I myself would have killed Lamus if I had had the means. I felt that he was deliberately torturing us for his own enjoyment.

  “Oh, I see,” said Cockie, “I forgot what you were. What’s your figure?”

  The point blank insult did not even make him smile. He turned to the tall girl who was at the desk, correcting proofs.

  “Note the characteristic reaction,” he said to her, as if we had been a couple of rabbits that he was vivisecting. “They don’t understand my point of view. They misquote my words, after hearing them every time we have met. They misinterpret four words of one syllable, ‘Do what thou wilt.’ Finally realising their lack of comprehension, they assume at once that I must be one of the filthiest scoundrels unhanged.”

  He turned back to Cockie with a little bow of apology.

  “Do try to get some idea of what I’m saying,” he said very earnestly.

  I was bursting with hatred, brimming with suspicion, aghast with contempt. Yet he forced me to feel his sincerity. I crushed down the realisation with furious anger.

  “I encourage you to take drugs,” he went on, “exactly as I encourage you to fly. Drugs claim to be every man’s master.”

  ‘Is it such terrible odds –

  The heir of ages of wonder,

  The crown of earth for an hour,

  The master of tide and thunder

  Against the juice of a flower?

  Ay I in the roar and the rattle

  Of all the armies of sin,

  This is the only battle

  He never was known to win.’

  “You children are the flower of the new generation. You have got to fear nothing. You have got to conquer everything. You have got to learn to make use of drugs as your ancestors learnt to make use of lightning. You have got to stop at the word of command, and go on at the word of command according to circumstances.”

  He paused. The dire need of the drug kept Peter alert. He followed the argument with intense activity.

  “Quite,” he agreed, “and just at the moment, the word of command is ‘go on’.”

  The face of King Lamus flowered into a smile of intense amusement; and the girl at the desk shook her thin body as if she were being deliciously tickled.

  Intuition told me why. They had heard the argument before.

  “Very cleverly put, Sir Peter. It would look well in a broad frame, very plain, of dark mahogany, over the mantelpiece, perhaps.”

  For some reason or other, the conversation was pulling us together. Though we had had no dope, we both felt very much better. Cockie fired his big gun.

  “It’s the essence of your teaching, surely, Sir. Lamus, that every man should be absolute master of his own destiny.”

  “Well, well,” admitted the Teacher with an exaggerated sigh, “I expected to be beaten in argument. I always am. But I, too, am the master of mine.

  ‘If Power asks Why, then is Power weakness,’ as we read in the Book of the Law; and it’s not my destiny to give you any drugs this morning.”

  “But you’re interfering with my Will,” protested Cockie, almost vivaciously.

  “It would take too long to explain,” returned Lamus, “why I think that remark unfair. But to quote the Book of the Law once more, ‘Enough of Because, be he damned for a dog.’ Instead, let me tell you a story.”

  We tactfully expressed eagerness to hear it.

  “The greatest mountaineer of his generation, as you know, was the late Oscar Eckenstein.”

  He went through a rather complicated gesture quite incomprehensible; but it vaguely suggested to me some ceremonial reverence connected with death.

  “I had the great good fortune to be adopted by this man; he taught me how to climb; in particular, how to glissade. He made me start down the slope from all kinds of complicated positions; head first and so on; and I had to let myself slide without attempting to save myself until he gave the word, and then I had to recover myself and finish, either sitting or standing, as he chose, to swerve or to stop; while he counted five. And he gave me progressively dangerous exercises. Of course, this sounds all rather obvious, but as a matter of fact, he was the only man who had learnt and who taught to glissade in this thorough way.

  “The acquired power, however, stood me in very good stead on many occasions. To save an hour may sometimes mean to save one’s life, and we could plunge down dangerous slopes where (for example) one might find oneself on a patch of ice when going at high speed if one were not certain of being able to stop in an instant when the peril were perceived. We could descend perhaps three thousand feet in ten minutes where people without that training would have had to go down step by step on the rope, and perhaps found themselves benighted in a hurricane in consequence.

  “But the best of it was this: I was in command of a Himalayan expedition some years ago; and the coolies were afraid to traverse a snow slope which overhung a terrific cliff. I called on them to watch me, flung myself on the snow head first, swept down like a sack of oats, and sprang to my feet on the very edge of the precipice.

  “There was a great gasp of awed amazement while I walked up to the men. They followed me across the mauvis pas without a moment’s hesitation. They probably thought it was magic or something. No matter what. But at least they felt sure that they could come to no harm by following a man so obviously under the protection of the mountain gods.”

  Cockie had gone deathly white. He understood with absolute clarity the point of the anecdote. He felt his manhood shamed that he was in the power of this blind black craving. He didn’t really believe that Lamus was telling the truth. He thought the man had risked his life to get those coolies across. It seemed impossible that a man could possess such absolute power and confidence. In other words, he judged King Lamus by himself. He knew himself not to be a first-rate airman. He had flattered himself that he had dared so many dangers. It cut him like a whip that Lamus should despise what people call the heroic attitude; that he looked upon taking unnecessary risks as mere animal folly. To be ready to take them, yes. “I do not set my life at a pin’s fee.”

  Lamus had no admiration for the cornered rat. His ideal was to make himself completely master of every possible circumstance.

  Cockie tried to say something two or three times; but the words wouldn’t come. King Lamus went to him and took his hand.

  “Drugs are the slope in front of us,” he said, “and I’m wily old Eckenstein, and you’re ambitious young Lamus. And I say ‘stop!’ and when you show me that you can stop, when you have picked yourself together and are standing on the slope laughing, I’ll show you how to go on.”

  We knew at the back of our minds that the man was inexorable. We hated him as the weak always hate the strong, and we had to respect and admire him, detesting him all the more for the fact.

  Chapter II

  INDIAN SUMMER

  We went out gritting our teeth with mingled rage and dejection. We walked on aimlessly in silence. A taxi offered itself. We climbed into it listlessly and drove back here. We threw ourselves on our beds. The idea of lunch was disgusting. We were too weak and to
o annoyed to do anything. We could not trust ourselves to speak; we should have quarrelled. I fell into a state of sleepless agony. Our visit to the studio had burnt itself into my mind. I imagined the flesh of my soul sizzling beneath the white hot branding iron of Lamus’s Will.

  I reached out my hands for this diary. It has relieved me to write it down in all this detail.

  I found myself on fire with passionate determination to fight H. and C. to a finish; and my hands were tied behind my back, my feet were fettered by a chain and ball. I wouldn’t be made to stop by that beast. We’d get it despite him. We wouldn’t be treated like children; we’d get as much as we wanted and we’d take it all the time, if it killed us.

  The conflict in myself raged all the afternoon. Cockie had gone to sleep. He snored and groaned. He was like one’s idea of a convict. He hadn’t shaved for two days. My own nails were black. I felt sticky and clammy all over. I hadn’t dressed myself. I had thrown my clothes on carelessly.

  Cockie woke about dinner-time. We couldn’t go down as we were. We were suddenly stung by the realisation that we were making ourselves conspicuous in the hotel. We had a horrible fear of being found out. They might do something. It was all the worse that we didn’t quite know what. And we felt so helpless, almost too weak to move a finger.

  Oh, couldn’t we find some anywhere! . . .

  My God! what a bit of luck. What a fool I am. There was one packet of H. in the pocket of my travelling dress. We crawled towards each other and shared it. After the long abstention, the effect was miraculous.

  Cockie picked himself up almost fiercely. The desperate anguish of our necessity drove him to swift resolute action. He sent for the barber and the waiter. We had the maid pack our things. We paid the bill and left our heavy trunks in the hotel, explaining that we had been called away suddenly on business. We put our dressing cases into a taxi and said, “Euston, main line.”

  Cockie stopped the man at Cambridge Circus.

  “Look here,” he said in an eager whisper, “we want some rooms in Soho. Some French or Italian place.”

  The man was equal to the problem. He found us a dirty dark little room on the ground floor in Greek Street. The landlady was some kind of Southerner with a dash of black blood. Her face told us that she was exactly the kind of woman we wanted.

  We paid the taxi. Cockie was very restless. He wanted to get the man to do what we wanted. He was itching all over, but he was afraid. We sat down on the bed, and began to make plans.