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Authors: Howard Marks
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physical and mental prowess – is completely and utterly devoted to, fixed on bringing about, one or another event in the external world, though not so much to experience the event in itself as to experience the reflection of the event on his consciousness. And if, to take it all a step further, everything a man does he does to bring about only those events which, when reflected in his consciousness, will make him feel happiness and joy, then what he spontaneously reveals thereby is nothing less than the basic mechanism behind his life and the life of every man, evil and cruel or good and kind.
One man does everything in his power to overthrow the tsar, another to overthrow the revolutionary junta; one man wishes to strike it rich, another gives his fortune to the poor. Yet what do these contrasts show but the diversity of human activity, which serves at best (and not in every case) as a kind of individual personality index. The reason behind human activity, as diverse as that activity may be, is always one: man’s need to bring about events in the external world which, when reflected in his consciousness, will make him feel happiness.
So it was in my insignificant life as well. The road to the external event was well marked: I wished to become a rich and famous lawyer. It would seem I had only to take the road and follow it to the end, especially since I had much to recommend me (or so I tried to convince myself). But oddly enough, the more time I spent making my way towards the cherished goal, the more often I would stretch out on the couch in my dark room and imagine I was what I intended to become, my penchant for sloth and reverie persuading me that there was no point in laying out so great an expenditure of time and energy to bring the external events to fruition when my happiness would be all the stronger if the events leading up to it came about rapidly and unexpectedly.
But such was the force of habit that even in my dreams of happiness I thought chiefly of the event rather than the feeling of happiness, certain that the event (should it but occur) would lead to the happiness I desired. I was incapable of divorcing the two. The problem was that before I first came in contact with cocaine I assumed that happiness was an entity, while in fact all human happiness consists of a clever fusion of two elements: 1) the physical feeling of happiness, and 2) the external event providing the psychic impetus for that feeling. Not until I first tried cocaine did I see the light; not until then did I see that the external event I had dreamed of bringing about – the result I had been slaving day and night for and yet might never manage to achieve – the external event was essential only insofar as I needed its reflection to make me feel happy. What if, as I was convinced, a tiny speck of cocaine could provide my organism with instantaneous happiness on a scale I had never dreamed of before. Then the need for any event whatever disappeared and, with it, the need for expending great amounts of work, time and energy to bring it about.
Therein lay the power of cocaine – in its ability to produce a feeling of physical happiness psychically independent of all external events, even when the reflection of the events in my consciousness would otherwise have produced feelings of grief, depression and despair. And it was that property of the drug that exerted so terribly strong an attraction on me that I neither could nor would oppose or resist it. The only way I could have done so was if the feeling of happiness had come less from bringing about the external event than from the work, the effort, the energy invested in bringing it about. But that was a kind of happiness I had never known.
Novel with Cocaine , 1936
Nelson Algren
The Man with the Golden Arm
T HE CLOCK IN the room above the Safari told only Junkie Time. For every hour here was Old Junkie’s Hour and the walls were the color of old junkies’ dreams: the hue of
One man does everything in his power to overthrow the tsar, another to overthrow the revolutionary junta; one man wishes to strike it rich, another gives his fortune to the poor. Yet what do these contrasts show but the diversity of human activity, which serves at best (and not in every case) as a kind of individual personality index. The reason behind human activity, as diverse as that activity may be, is always one: man’s need to bring about events in the external world which, when reflected in his consciousness, will make him feel happiness.
So it was in my insignificant life as well. The road to the external event was well marked: I wished to become a rich and famous lawyer. It would seem I had only to take the road and follow it to the end, especially since I had much to recommend me (or so I tried to convince myself). But oddly enough, the more time I spent making my way towards the cherished goal, the more often I would stretch out on the couch in my dark room and imagine I was what I intended to become, my penchant for sloth and reverie persuading me that there was no point in laying out so great an expenditure of time and energy to bring the external events to fruition when my happiness would be all the stronger if the events leading up to it came about rapidly and unexpectedly.
But such was the force of habit that even in my dreams of happiness I thought chiefly of the event rather than the feeling of happiness, certain that the event (should it but occur) would lead to the happiness I desired. I was incapable of divorcing the two. The problem was that before I first came in contact with cocaine I assumed that happiness was an entity, while in fact all human happiness consists of a clever fusion of two elements: 1) the physical feeling of happiness, and 2) the external event providing the psychic impetus for that feeling. Not until I first tried cocaine did I see the light; not until then did I see that the external event I had dreamed of bringing about – the result I had been slaving day and night for and yet might never manage to achieve – the external event was essential only insofar as I needed its reflection to make me feel happy. What if, as I was convinced, a tiny speck of cocaine could provide my organism with instantaneous happiness on a scale I had never dreamed of before. Then the need for any event whatever disappeared and, with it, the need for expending great amounts of work, time and energy to bring it about.
Therein lay the power of cocaine – in its ability to produce a feeling of physical happiness psychically independent of all external events, even when the reflection of the events in my consciousness would otherwise have produced feelings of grief, depression and despair. And it was that property of the drug that exerted so terribly strong an attraction on me that I neither could nor would oppose or resist it. The only way I could have done so was if the feeling of happiness had come less from bringing about the external event than from the work, the effort, the energy invested in bringing it about. But that was a kind of happiness I had never known.
Novel with Cocaine , 1936
Nelson Algren
The Man with the Golden Arm
T HE CLOCK IN the room above the Safari told only Junkie Time. For every hour here was Old Junkie’s Hour and the walls were the color of old junkies’ dreams: the hue of
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