I followed you to the edge of demon land, to the caverns of the drunkards, and then you deserted me. I have spent a million, billion years of agony inexpressible, and have had that agony made doubly horrible by contrast with the thought, yes, the very sight and touch of Heaven. The guide then reveals that our hero's suffering and ecstasy all took place instantaneously. It is, we learn, the same sort of timeless eternity which one experiences at death. Depending on one's life, this eternity can be one of joy or anguish.
Any stimulant is an enemy to man, any narcotic is a fiend.
It destroys its victim, and corrupts the mind, entices it into pastures grotesque, and even pleasant at first, but destined to eternal misery in the end. With this footnote, Lloyd makes it abundantly clear that he has discovered some hallucinogenic material and hidden his knowledge of it because he fears that humanity would 'debase' itself with it. Lloyd's brother, Curtis Gates Lloyd, was a leading mycologist and probably would have collected samples of Stropharia cubensis or other indigenous American hallucinogenic mushrooms. It is therefore plausible that John Uri Lloyd discovered the psychedelic mushroom years before the Wasson's 1955 historical participation in sacred mushroom rituals in Oaxaca, Mexico. On the other hand, it is also possible that Lloyd discovered some other non-fungal hallucinogen.