“But of course, alcohol had few romantic possibilities. It wasn’t exotic, and everyone, practically, took it. To be a mere drunk was not compatible with the Romantics’ thirst for world-significant angst” (Dalrymple, Romancing Opiates, p. 83).
Destruo Ergo Sum
“There is one other romantic attraction of opiates: and that is to the antinomian turn of mind. This turn of mind has become much more common with the general rise of self-importance, which is a corollary of democracy: and in an age of celebrity, everyone feels obliged to leave his mark on the world, or …
Which Is Where We Get Stoned Goobers
“Romantic claptrap invests intoxication by opiates with a philosophical significance beyond mere self-indulgence . . . It elevates feeling and intuition above knowledge and thought in the pantheon of human desiderata. It invests the personal pettiness of addiction with the aura of titanic and tormenting struggles against mighty forces, while at the same time implying …
A Neglected Courtship Protocol
“Talking to a young woman’s father is not the same thing as staking a claim, or establishing dibbies” (Her Hand in Marriage, p.63).
Romantic Claptrap
“In modern society the main cause of drug addiction, apart from the fact that many people have nothing to live for, is a literary tradition of romantic claptrap, started by Coleridge and DiQuincey, and continued without serious interruption ever since” (Dalrymple, Romancing Opiates, p. 61).
Why Addiction Isn’t Really
“In other words, the establishment of an addiction requires a certain discipline or determination. It is not something that creeps up on your unnoticed or unannounced or all unawares. As a moment’s reflection would suggest to anyone not blinded by self-interest, this fact has important and profound implications for the very concept of treatment, which …
Another Part of the Tangle
“When a little girl is not getting the attention from her father that she needs, she remains hungry for male attention and she will seek it elsewhere. Now when a little girl does this with someone she does not know, she is usually a pain in the neck. But what happens when this young girl, …
The Chicken and Egg
“A man who says that he is easily led . . . never uses this characteristic to explain his good deeds, good characteristics, or positive achievements. A man never claims to have been easily led to higher mathematics, the subjunctives of foreign languages, or unpaid work among the poor. People are influenced by the people …
The Model to Copy
“The pillars of Donne’s biblical, Protestant poetics are: that the scriptures are the most eloquent books in the world, that God is a witty and also ‘a figurative, a metaphoricall God,’and that the religious lyric poet should endeavor to ‘write after . . . [his] Copie.'” (Lewalski, Protestant Poetics, p.282).
Son of a Gun. Whattaya Know?
“Unfortunately, it is not only those who take heroin who are blinded by illusions, but almost the entire population, including—or especially—the experts. Every problem in contemporary society calls forth its equal and supposedly opposite bureaucracy. The ostensible purpose of the bureaucracy is to solve that problem. But the bureaucracy quickly develops a survival instinct and …