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  • I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.

    Edgar Allan Poe, Simon Marsden (1988). “Visions of Poe: a personal selection of Edgar Allan Poe's stories and poems”, Michael Joseph