Naked Lunch

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 myself....'

'No glot... C'lom Fliday'

Tangier, 1959.

117

APPENDIX

The British Journal of Addiction

Vol.53, n°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 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 abcesses. Injection in the vein is unpleasant and perharps 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 administred, 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 by 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 118

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 constractions, paranoid obsessions, fear of insanity. Finally I developed 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