POSTSCRIPT
This book follows a chronological order. What I learn, I learn little by little like a beginner. The reader will do the same. However, without a preliminary and partial synthesis, he would probably not have known what he was getting into. Hence the foreword.
The experiment with Indian hemp comes next. Later the fourth, the crucial experiment with mescaline, which as it was a surprise to me, should come as a surprise to any one who reads me. That is why the preface does not complete what every one will learn in the final chapter.
Nor do I wish to boast of a perfect experimental schizophrenia either. I see how one might be achieved.
That mescalinian madness does not become permanent is demonstrated by the remarkable experiment that Dr. Morelli made on himself (Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique, 1936) when, after taking 0.75 gr. of mescaline he experienced such a furious onslaught of perverse impulses that he had to take refuge in a sanitorium, as well as by the experiments, among others, made by Drs. Delay and Gerard with different patients and students. Patients on the road to recovery, after a short interruption due to shock, continue on their way to complete recovery. This, however, would not be true for anyone who had suffered a serious psychic experience either just before or just after taking mescaline.
One last word : To the amateurs of one-way perspectives who might be tempted to judge all my writings as the work of a drug addict, let me say that I regret, but I am more the water-drinking type. Never alcohol. No excitants, and for years no coffee, tobacco, or tea. From time to time wine, a little. All my life, in the matter of food or drink, moderate. I can take or abstain. Particularly, abstain. As a matter of fact, fatigue is my drug.
I forgot. Twenty five years ago, or more, I tried ether seven or eight times, once laudanum, and twice the most unspeakable of all, alcohol.