less, as
though graven in the face itself: the laggard second-hand moved so
slowly that it seemed a hopeless task to watch it during its whole
infinite round of a minute, and I always gave up in despair before the
sixty seconds had elapsed. When my mind was most lucid there was a
distinct duplex action in regard to the duration of time. I would think
to myself, "It has been so long since a certain event!"--an hour, for
example, since the doctor was summoned--but Reason would say, "No, it
has been only a few minutes: your thoughts and feelings are caused by
the hasheesh." Nevertheless, I was not able to shake off, even for a
moment, this sense of the almost indefinite prolongation of time.
Gradually the periods of unconsciousness became longer and more
frequent, and the oppressive feeling of impending death more intense. It
was like a horrible nightmare: each successive paroxysm was felt to be
the longest I had suffered. As I came out of it a voice seemed
constantly saying, "You are getting worse; your paroxysms are growing
longer and deeper; they will overmaster you; you will die." A sense of
personal antagonism between my will-power and myself, as affected by the
drug, grew very strong. I felt as though my only chance was to struggle
against these paroxysms--that I must constantly arouse myself by an
effort of will; and that effort was made with infinite toil and pain. It
seemed to me as if some evil spirit had the control of the whole of me
except the will, and was in determined conflict with that, the last
citadel of my being. Once or twice during a paroxysm I felt myself
mounting upward, expanding, dilating, dissolving into the wide confines
of space, overwhelmed by a horrible, unutterable despair. Then by a
tremendous effort I seemed to break loose and to start up with the
shuddering thought, "Next time you will not be able to throw this off;
and what then?" The sense of double consciousness which I had to some
extent is often, under the action of hasheesh, much more distinct. I
have known patients to whom it seemed that they themselves sitting upon
the chair were in continual conversation with a second self standing in
front of them. The explanation of this curious condition is a difficult
one. It is possible that the two sides of the brain, which are
accustomed in health to work as one organ, are disjoined by the poison,
so that one half of the brain thinks and acts in opposition to the other
half.

From what ha