Narcotics: Nicotine, Alcohol, Cocaine, Peyote, Morphine, Ether by Witkiewicz Stanisław Ignacy

Author:Witkiewicz, Stanisław Ignacy [Witkiewicz, Stanisław Ignacy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Art, Literature, Fiction, Biography
ISBN: 9788086264868
Publisher: Twisted Spoon Press
Published: 2018-02-20T21:00:00+00:00

Portrait of Col. Janusz Beaurain

pastels, 1929, peyote

Morphine

by Bohdan Filipowski

Professor of Esoteric Philosophy, Emeritus

I believe the fundamental category to gauge the danger this narcotic poses to humanity, to try to classify and compare various narcotics, would have to be psychological (in accordance with the guidelines of my study as a whole). A narcotic’s emotional value is the measure that practically begs to be adopted. It goes without saying that practice furnishes the examples, every step of the way.

The wider the scope and the profounder the psychological experiences a drogue provides, the greater its power of attraction and the stronger the temptation when an opportunity to try it arises.

And yet, ask the addict why he so recklessly endangers his mind, health, and nervous system. Try using what they call persuasion, try appealing to his sobriety and reason, and in ninety cases out of one hundred he will tell you: “but my good man, if you only knew ... ,” and then enthusiastically proceed to tell you what incomparable emotion an alkaloid, supposons,117 gives him, and how this value utterly trumps all other priorities in his life.

There you have it. So if I were to compare various narcotics from this point of view, then morphine must categorically be ranked among the most dangerous! For morphine possesses these “values” to the utmost degree – and some of these could even rightly be called positive values if ... it is on this “if” that everything hinges. But before I wheel out this major reservation, permit me a minor digression which is, if nothing else, timely.

I cannot recall the French writer who stubbornly reiterated that the emotional properties of narcotics are purely and simply negative. Based on this false assumption he proceeded to arrive at a host of equally spurious conclusions.

To wit: he said narcotics are utterly incapable of providing emotional and mental experiences of any positive value, that the stories of the phantasmagorias and sensations of opium, hashish, etc., the descriptions of the artificial paradises, are rubbish from beginning to end, and moreover, that narcotics are only capable of alleviating the pain of our soul and our sufferings born of the outside world, desensitizing us to all the worries, sorrows, and incommodities of our lives.

From this comes a vital conclusion, namely: before you can taste the sweets of narcotic paradises you must first be miserable, you must first travel through all manner of hell and suffering in life, only then to find delight in liberating yourself in addled stupefaction, which ultimately is all there is. The author also explains this phenomenon by noting that addicts seldom are quick to help “laymen” understand how drugs work. It would indeed overcomplicate matters if your friend had to feel first profound dejection before discovering a true appreciation of an alkaloid.

Clearly, this is an effort to depict narcotics as merely a kind of mental anesthetic.

At the very least, this French author does sincerely confess he has only experienced drugs vicariously, on the basis of “rather vague stories” (and, I might add, probably fourth-hand).

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