Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1915-04-18
Breaking the Shackles

sis shows his literary illusions, his musical
composition, or his address to have been
monotonous drivel, the meaningless bonn
bast of drug stimulation. He has flung loose
the rein of Reason on the neck of Ruin
and is galloping straight to Perdition.
By that time it is usually too late to
check his headlong course. When the
bonds become sufficiently tangible to be
evident that the habit has fastened itself
upon the very soul they are not to be
wrenched loose and cast out without bat
tie royal.
The psychological effect of cocaine is
perhaps its most conspicuous and per-
nicious feature. Cocaine habitues are al
most without exception notorious liars.
Their moral sense is destroyed in proper
ton to their subsection to the habit. Their
faculty of knowing right from wrong is
atrophied and shrveled. In the matter
of appeasing their drug-engendered APP
petite, they are absolutely without scru-
pie. They will steal, even murder if neces-
sary, to obtain the narcotic
THE moral degradation of an addict
drugs including alcohol, while long rec
ognized, has only recently been explained
on scientific grounds. We now know that
the moral sense departs first because it
came last in our evolutionary develop
ment. The higher cells of the brain (the
cortical cells), in which reside the attri-
butes that have been nurtured by tho
social life of the race,-in which tho
Golden Rule" and the "mne and thine
have their eXistence,-are the first to be
drug-impaired.
Scientists stumbled upon this fact in
studying the moral degeneracy of paretics.
those afflicted with softening of tho
brain,-in which it was found that there
was distinct correspondence between
the loss in moral tone and the degree of
degeneration in the cortical cells. Ex-
perience has demonstrated physical de-
generation in these same cells of drug adj
diets, proving physiological basis for
their moral loss. This seems to substan-
tiate Brownings assertion, "Nor soul
helps body more than body helps SOUL
The sensations following the use of CO.
cane vary slightly, according to the in
dividual The exaltation, which is its
first effect, may, and frequently does, take
the form of wild frenzy, sometimes ac-
companied by the fantastic Authorizations
and decisions that are associated with
acute mania. This is followed by pro-
found depression, which furnishes the all
compelling pretext for continuing the use
of the drug, -attempting to overcome
temporarily the thing that overcomes it,
Occasionally the addict imagines that
certain people are abusing or prosecuting
him, and this inctes his murderous at
tacks upon unsuspecting and entirely in
nocent victims This is particularly truo
of the negro in the South, whose nervous
organism is very unstable when excited
by drugs. He becomes veritable fend.
lusting for blood. Thus cocaine is respon-
sible for many terrible tragedies in the
South.
An interesting phenomenon connected
with the action of cocaine on the nervous
system is the tenacty of life of one under
the influence of the drug. Readers will
recall, in Push the Health Button" a de-
scription of DR.. Criles method of cutting
off "anoc association. preventing sur
gical shock. by injecting cocaine into tho
course of the nerves located near the seat
of an operation. We saw how this pro-
ceturp inhibited the passape of the nerve