DOPE!

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 4, 1 October 1924, Page 51

DOPE!

LEONORA EYLES (Author of " Hidden Lives

r E most of us dope on occasion. I don’t mean that we take cocaine or alcohol. Other things, just as paralysing to action. There is the idealist’s dope: he wants so much for the world; he wants perfection. And life falls so far short of it that he retires into a dream of Utopia. —peace from his gnawing hopes and disappointments. There is the poet’s dope. He wants a world of beautiful sounds and forms and colours. His ear is jarred, his eye tortured by ugliness all around him, ugliness of things, ugliness of spirit. So he retires into a dream of unreality; what his soul desires he imagines has come to pass. And so, for a time, he is happy. Dope again—paralysing. There is the neurotic’s dope. Some neurotics never dare to become conscious. Born weak, educated without courage or grit, often very sensitive and full of ideals, such a man has not the sheer stuff in him to make life what he wishes it to be. So he retires into a dream of self-pity and persecution; he tells himself what he could have done if only people had given him a chance. He hugs his martyrdom. More dope—he is quite happy! Then there is the dope necessary to the man who shuts himself in his own egotism. There are some such men who literally dare not get quite sober; they must take alcohol or drugs because they cannot face the things that are. Clear-sighted, but lacking courage or the technique of life; charming, often, on the surface, they incur human responsibilities they cannot meet; they demand love and can give none; they demand and accept service of all sorts and return none. Conscience speaks to them, sternly telling them what they owe to their friends and lovers. They cannot bear conscience. So they deceive themselves by getting intoxicated or doped, and then blame their friends for having “upset” them and made the doping necessary to their peace of mind. There is no health of mind or peace for such people until they face themselves clearly, admitting failures, rottennesses, and the debts they owe others. John Bunyan knew this when he made Christian drop his bundle before he could go on any farther. If the dope-taker does not drop his burden, he will keep on taking dope to help him bear the agony of it. There is another dope. Hard work, solid, hard work; the “curse,” or blessing, put on humanity in Eden. Hard work is a drug that brings health and peace it brings sweet sleep and quiet breathing. It brings no unpleasant taste after it. You can, as they say, “lose yourself” in it. And that is the aim of doping. Or the aim of love. Or the aim of religion.