1
" To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To
say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to
say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels,
no soul. I cannot reason otherwise .. . without plunging
into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am
satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which
are, without tormenting or troubling myself about
those which may indeed be, but of which I have no
evidence. "
― Thomas Jefferson
2
" A book is open in front of me and this is what it has to
say about the symptoms of morphine withdrawal:
'... morbid anxiety, a nervous depressed condition,
irritability, weakening of the memory, occasional
hallucinations and a mild impairment of consciousness
...'
I have not experienced any hallucinations, but I can
only say that the rest of this description is dull, pedestrian
and totally inadequate.
'Depressed condition' indeed!
Having suffered from this appalling malady, I hereby enjoin
all doctors to be more compassionate toward their
patients. What overtakes the addict deprived of morphine
for a mere hour or two is not a 'depressed condition': it is
slow death. Air is insubstantial, gulping it down is useless
... there is not a cell in one's body that does not crave
... but crave what? This is something which defies analysis
and explanation. In short, the individual ceases to exist:
he is eliminated. The body which moves, agonises and
suffers is a corpse. It wants nothing, can think of nothing
but morphine. To die of thirst is a heavenly, blissful death
compared with the craving for morphine. The feeling must
be something like that of a man buried alive, clawing at the
skin on his chest in the effort to catch the last tiny bubbles
of air in his coffin, or of a heretic at the stake, groaning and
writhing as the first tongues of flame lick at his feet.
Death. A dry, slow death. That is what lurks behind
that clinical, academic phrase 'a depressed condition'. "
― Mikhail Bulgakov , Morphine
