An Addendum to William S. Burroughs

I have heard that heroine addicts--junkies--seek by means of self-destruction to recreate their primordial high.  

"If you have no histamine-produced symptoms, antihistamine drugs produce no effect.  I bought some ampules of an antihistamine drug and shot a double dose.  I experienced nothing but a slight depression (the depressing effects of some antihistamine preparations are "side effect" which chemists intend to eliminate).  A shot that felt exactly like morphine when I was sick now produced effects that were barely perceptible.  It seems that a user does not get a positive kick from junk.  What he gets is relief from withdrawal sickness.  Possibly all pleasure is basically relief from a condition of need, or tension.  Junk is the medium in which the junk the junk-dependent cells live.  When junk is cut off junk cells die, and excess histamine is produced to carry away the dead cells.  The function of allergic sneezing, running at the nose and eyes, vomiting and diarrhea, is to get rid of something.  During addiction, junk is a biological necessity, like food, water or sex.  There is no other substance that becomes in this way a part of the biological rhythm of the body."

What then is redemption to a junky, but withdrawal sickness--a willful overcoming of a base biological process.  If though the junky craves junk as we--who shot not William Tell's Eve--crave "food, water or sex", have we willfully overcome our base biology?  Without a biological temptation to overcome by sheer will, we have not yet truly suffered ourselves and are thus as base as the unredeemed user and the biology that binds all of our natures together.