A GROWING EVIL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9214, 18 April 1908, Page 2

A GROWING EVIL.

" The Valley of the Shadow." " A Victim " in the " Daily Mail '* writes : — Cocaine! silently, stealthily, steadily, the cocaine habit is eating its poisonous way into the lives and constitutions of thousands of men and women not only in this country, but in our Empire of India, and especially among our cousins of America. The habit has laid euch a hold upon the inhabitants (native) of India that the authorities are making strenuous efforts to restrict the sale ot the drug, and within the last few weeks a shipment, of cocaine worth £6666 was sent back to England from Calcutta by the Excise Department.

Despite the comparatively recent growth of the habit in Europe, the natives of South America and the Pacific Islands, where the cocoa plant is indigenous, and of India and Ceylon, where it has been acclimatised, have been in the daily habit of chewing its leaves, probably for centuries, smeared with lime and the ashes of the Quinoa plant, as a preventive against the effects of extraordinary exertion, to appease hunger and thirst, ,and > to relieve the difficulty of respiration in ascending mountains.

The leaves when dried have the flavour of tea, with an added peculiar bitterness and a slightly aromatic taste s taken in this manner the amount of the drug absorbed is so slight as to be only beneficial in the connection in which it is used, 'xiie reason for the growing use of the extracted cocaine by the natives of India, is probably the greater ease of using the drug m this form and the much more rapid effect of such use — an effect quite out of proportion to the needs or the user and one tha^rquickly loses its power, thus leading to a further application, and the repetition of this until the good done is entirely absorbed in the physical and moral evil resulting.

In a somewhat different form this has been the case in England ; the infinite good of cocaine in five-eighths of the diseases that affect mankind has led doctors to prescribe it for their patients, with the best results. But observe the hand of human weakness. The pharmaceutical laws of this country dej mand that a copy of each prescription shall be taken by the chemist who i makes up the medicine, and the prescription itself is returned, not to the doctor who wrote it. but to the patient, who. finding the relief obtained from its use, is at perfect liberty to have that prescription made up again and again. That is one of the primary causes. FINDING IMMEDIATE PEAOB. A small injection of cocaine is wonderfully stimulating in its effects; a man worn out with infinite toil and worry, with prolonged physical exertion or great mental strain, may find immediate peace in its use. This at first, when the dosa is very small. He increases it ; he is compelled to increase or stop it (an easy thing at this period — so easy that the victim is induced to believe that it will be always so). He does not stop; he goes on for, let us cay. three months, increasing the dose by, at first, infinitesimal fractions of a grain, then more boldly, and finally by leaps and bounds. He is brilliant, his friends marvel at his vitality, his versatility^ and his abnormally charming and vivacious conversational powers; he is never tired, he eats and sleeps well* yet lie is never

sleepy or hungry ; he has discovered the elixir of perpetual strength and youth, he feels immortal — a peer of the gods. Three months!

He sees no Dark Tower ahead, he is no Childe Roland; the thickened and shortened respiration are unnoticed, the racing pulse and thumping heart cause no qualm, the preternatnrally brilliant and sparkling eyes that look out at him from his drefißing-glass are disregarded — they mean nothing to him ; the senses are brilliant yet deadened, and the cocaine demon has him m her # toils; he does not find her embrace irksome, he walks on air rather than earth, and outside objects do not materially affect him. Three months! And nothing to show the world (or himself) that he is approaohing a worse pass than if he were already a drunkard ten times over. The degradation of alcohol is as nothing to his degradation of body and soul.

THE FORGOTTEN DOSE. One morning he goes out without his customary dose— by this time a fairly large one. At Erst he feels well, then a little dull ; all will be welT he tells himself; he whistles, tries to be cheerful, fails, and becomes quite stupid ; he can scarcely ccc : he has no perceptible sensation in his body, and in an agony of terror he rushes home for the dose he has forgotten. All is well again: he steps lightly out and is himseff-Lor what j>asses^ for it. # Again three months, and now another important factor has to be dealt with; the gleaming, ghastly white, laminated crystals of the drug hare a fascination for him m themselves alone as they lie in a soft woolly heap in the little phial on his dreseing-case; they are irresistible, they seem to live, to glow with a ! nre that does not burn, but rather soothes; they whisper, to him and tell' oi sweet fields and streams that lull the.,achmg senses, cool the throbbing brow; they an> hie gods, these crystals that are so harmless to see and touch so ruinous and desolating to use; he worships them— if he be left without them for half a day he is reduced to an j abjoct heap bordering upon delirium. He has another charmer of a fascination, if possible, more complete than the crystals themselves ; it is the beautifully constructed little hypodermic syringe .that ministers to his worship of fhe drug. It lies in its red plush case— the deep blood-colour and its snergestion "never appals him with thp sinister reflection through the dear glass of the syringe --with the glftammg n«edle thnt fee keeps so w,ruT>u T ou6lv ; clean and threads with the little fine silver wire after each injection ; its smiling silver nozzle with its so enigmatical and immovable expression, its glass barrel and serpentine screw down the entire length of the interior— it is a thing to he proud of, a high priest to revere. He takes it from his desk, fits the needle, adjust 1 ? the scjwv, evt-racts the silver wire, and enters Paradise through what seems its 'most accessible gate.

\For these things name and fame are fofj-otten. For these honour and humanity may be flung to the winds ; for these hoTtie, wife, family, may be sacrificed. The world, the present, the future are pquallv of no consequence; common decency is a thinir unknown at this ■period : und he would murder his yonnsrest child for five grains of his goddess airl mistress. Six months 1

FEAB THAT COMES BT NIGHT. A little further on, a very little further on, in the life of a man, although in the past eeven months he has lived * lifetime, he .wakes up one night, wide awake in the most silent hour of the night, with a deadly terror gripping at his breast. His room is peopled with horrible shapes, not the dragons of delirium, for he is actually sane and conscious of everything — shapes of the imagination ; his heart stands still, than beata # wildly, then stands still again — ' here is a. change after months of that joyous, swift, even beating of the vital organ, those months of happiness where no care appeared. The terrors of death seize upon him, and a ghastly unnamable horror, an almost living, breathing, palpitating horror clutches at and envelops his whole being^r'yet he" does not die. The horror continues, and only abates at dawn. In spite of this great fear and horror, his mind is perfectly clear, he can. think with the accuracy of perfrct health, he knows the reason of his abject state, and although the combination of perfect understanding and blind terror has reduced him to the trembling, pitiable remnant of a man ~a presents, he may now make up his mmd — it is probably his last chance.

Seven months! One done pf cocaine when that horror seized him would have him right. He was too frightened to get out of bed and set itl Let him now say to himself, ** Never more," place himself in the hands of a good doctor, and the chances are, that although for a time he may border upon madness, he will eventually recover. After this there is no fear of his reverting ; he will be a man again with a soul.