A troubled life fraught with drug abuse and corresponding episodes of hallucination, euphoria, nocturnal wanderings, nightmares, paranoia, disorientation, hyper-activity, yet partially redeemed by an engaging, mesmerizing, effortless prose style:
"The ocean, in everlasting but gentle agitation, and brooded over by a dove-like calm, might not unfitly typify the mind and the mood which then swayed it. For it seemed to me as if then first I stood at a distance, and aloof from the uproar of life; as if the tumult, the fever, and the strife, were suspended; a respite granted from the secret burthens of the heart; a sabbath of repose; a resting from human labours. Here were the hopes which blossom in the paths of life, reconciled with the peace which is in the grave; motions of the intellect as unwearied as the heavens, yet for all anxieties a halcyon calm: a tranquility that seemed no product of inertia, but as if resulting from mighty and equal antagonisms; infinite activities, infinite repose.” ― Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater
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