The Diary of a Drug Fiend
A Decadent Tale of Cocaine, Heroin, Erotic Obsession, and Spiritual CrisisBy Aleister Crowley
Length12h 52m
About this audiobook
Aleister Crowley's *The Diary of a Drug Fiend* (1922) is a provocative novel of addiction, intoxication, and spiritual reorientation. Its protagonist, Peter Pendragon, passes from cocaine and heroin dependence toward a demanding, occult-inflected discipline of recovery, while the narrative moves between sensational episodes, psychological confession, satire, and metaphysical speculation. Crowley's flamboyant prose deliberately unsettles conventional moral fiction: drugs are neither reduced to simple vice nor romanticized without consequence, but presented as instruments whose effects depend upon will, knowledge, and ethical purpose. Emerging amid early twentieth-century debates about narcotics, modernity, and alternative spirituality, the book belongs equally to decadent literature, the drug narrative, and the esoteric novel. Crowley (1875–1947), a poet, mountaineer, ceremonial magician, and influential figure in modern Western occultism, drew upon his own extensive experiments with drugs and disciplined magical practice. His personal history, including his rejection of Victorian Christianity and his formulation of Thelema, informs the novel's insistence that liberation requires self-mastery rather than mere indulgence. The work is therefore both imaginative fiction and a controversial vehicle for Crowley's spiritual philosophy. Readers interested in literary modernism, addiction studies, occult history, or the relationship between altered consciousness and artistic creation will find the book richly suggestive. It should be approached critically, with attention to its sensationalism and dated assumptions, but its audacity, intellectual tensions, and unusual fusion of autobiography, satire, and esoteric thought remain compelling.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 3.8 (4.8K)
Includes Goodreads, Amazon, LibraryThing, StoryGraph
GenreMystery and Thriller, Horror
Length12 hrs 52 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateJul 16, 2021
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1The Visitor's Hand-Book for Holyhead (Annotated)
2Preface
3Book I. Paradiso
4Chapter I. A Knight Out
5Chapter II. Over the Top!
Show all chaptersShow less
6Chapter III. Phaeton
7Chapter IV. Au Pays De Cocaine
8Chapter V. A Heroin Heroine
9Chapter VI. The Glitter on the Snow
10Chapter VII. The Wings of the Oof-Bird
11Chapter VIII. Vedere Napoli E Poi-Pro Patria-Mort
12Chapter IX. The Gatto Fritto
13Chapter X. The Bubble Bursts
14Book II. Inferno
15Chapter I. Short Commons
16Chapter II. Indian Summer
17Chapter III. The Grinding of the Brakes
18Chapter IV. Below the Brutes
19Chapter V. Towards Madness
20Chapter VI. Cold Turkey
21Chapter VII. The Final Plunge
22Book III. Purgatorio
23Chapter I. King Lamus Intervenes
24Chapter II. First Aid
25Chapter III. The Voice of Virtue
26Chapter IV. Out of Harm's Way
27Chapter V. At Telepylus
28Chapter VI. The True Will
29Chapter VII. Love Under Will
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