Sublime

And I wanted to write like this as well: numbness as a feeling, numbness as a motivation, numbness as the reason to exist, numbness as ecstasy.

The difference between real material poison and intellectual poison is that most material poison is disgusting to the taste, but intellectual poison, which takes the form of cheap newspapers or bad books, can unfortunately sometimes be attractive.

It is to Paracelsus, the famed “father of chemo-therapy,” that we can trace the revival of interest in opium. The great sixteenth-century Swiss alchemist, medical reformer, and quack advocated and used opium on a lavish scale.

The things I’ve done for sex and drugs: unspeakable. The things sex and drugs have done for me: my entire output. And enough material to last me another lifetime as an artist.

The eleventh-century Persian polymath Avicenna, who in 1037 became history’s first recorded death from opium overdose, was one of the first to write about coffee, though it had been in use for some time in Ethiopia and Arabia, where the source plant occurred wild.

Scarcely had I regained recollection of the purpose that brought me hither. Thoughts of a different tendency had such absolute possession of my mind, that the relations of time and space were almost obliterated from my understanding. These wanderings, however, were restrained, and I ascended to her chamber.

Apart he stalked in joyless reverie … With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe, And e’en for change of scene would seek the shades below.16fn1 There was in him a vital scorn of all … He stood a stranger in this breathing world … So much he soared beyond, or sunk beneath, The men with whom he felt condemned to breathe …17

I managed to keep up my habits performing cut-rate abortions in subway toilets.