CHAPTER 28 OF
THE ORIGINAL “JUNK” MANUSCRIPT
At this time I read The Cancer Biopathy by Wilhelm Reich. Reich says that Life is a charge, and the charged particles on which life depends he calls “orgones.” When your “orgone” charge gives out, you die. Orgones are everywhere in the atmosphere, and in all living and dead matter. An orgone envelope surrounds the earth, and orgones charge the sunlight. Orgones give off a blue color.
Philosophers have been talking for a long time about “life-force” and “cosmic energy.” But Reich’s orgones are a definite force that can be measured, concentrated and used. He claims clinical results in treating with orgone therapy cancer and other “biopathies.” By a “cancer biopathy,” Reich means the whole cancer set-up which is established long before the symptoms of cancer appear. Reich devised a method for concentrating orgones based on the experimental finding that orgones are absorbed and retained by organic matter, but pass freely through metal. He built a box with organic material on the outside and a lining of sheet iron inside. The orgones are caught and absorbed by the outer layer of organic matter and pass freely through the sheet iron to the inside of the box. The passage of orgones from the inside of the box out is retarded by a layer of organic matter behind the sheet metal lining. So orgones are coming into the box faster than they can get out and the result is a concentration of orgones inside the box. Reich calls this box an accumulator. The accumulators designed for orgone therapy are constructed with several organic-metal layers to increase the concentration of orgones, and shaped like a steam cabinet so the patient can sit down inside the box.
Cancer is rot of tissue in a living organism. In junk sickness the junk-dependent cells die and are replaced. Cancer is a premature death process. The cancer patient shrinks. A sick junkie shrinks— I have lost up to fifteen pounds in three days. So I figured if the accumulator is therapy for cancer, it should be therapy for the after-effects of junk sickness.
Accumulators are manufactured by the Orgone Institute in New York. They do not sell or rent accumulators. They allow you to use one if you contribute ten dollars per month to the Orgone Institute. I sent three months’ contribution in advance and asked them to express collect me an accumulator. They sent back three forms to be filled out and signed. One was a we-are-not-responsible-for-anything affidavit. There was a pledge for me to sign that I would not let anyone else use my accumulator and would report to the Institute if I saw anyone building an accumulator, and a questionnaire to be filled out by my physician what was wrong with me and why did I need an accumulator. I did not want to explain about orgones to some croaker who would take me for a lunatic. Besides, I did not like the way the Orgone people were coming on. Why say “contributions” when you mean rent? And the pledge was ridiculous. So I wrote them to send my money back and here are your forms.
I bought sheet metal, wood and a roll of rock wool, and built an accumulator about the size and shape of a small outhouse. I located it outside (it was not movable), so it would get all the orgones available. Constant use of junk over a period of years has given me the habit of directing attention inward. When I went into the accumulator and sat down I noticed a special silence that you sometimes feel in deep woods, sometimes on a city street, a hum that is more a rhythmic vibration than a sound. My skin prickled and I experienced an aphrodisiac effect similar to good strong weed. No doubt about it, orgones are as definite a force as electricity. After using the accumulator for several days my energy came back to normal. I began to eat, and could not sleep more than eight hours. I was out of the post cure drag. I bought some books on pharmacology to find out what I could about allergy, shock and the antihistamine drugs.
Withdrawal symptoms are allergic symptoms: sneezing, coughing, running at the eyes and nose, vomiting, diarrhea, hive-like conditions of the skin. Severe withdrawal symptoms are shock symptoms: lowered blood pressure, loss of body fluid and shrinking of the organism as in the death process, weakness, involuntary orgasms, death through collapse of the circulatory system. If an addict dies from junk withdrawal, he dies of allergic shock.
All the symptoms of shock can be produced by an overdose of histamine. Histamine is produced by body tissue wherever injury occurs. Histamine enlarges blood vessels so that extra blood comes to the place of injury. When a blood vessel is enlarged, its walls are stretched thin and porous and so fluid escapes. Loss of blood leads to lowered blood pressure. Excess histamine leads to a lowering of blood pressure and shock, as occurs in serious injury. Adrenaline is the body’s defense against excess histamine, and before the specific antihistamine drugs, was the only chemical antidote for histamine poisoning.
Most animals have been addicted to junk under experimental conditions. After receiving the shots for a period of ten days or so, the animal reacts to the hypodermic as if it were a food plate, rushing eagerly forward to get his shot. When junk is withdrawn, the animal shows withdrawal symptoms: No other substance has produced this syndrome in animals—that the animal eagerly seeks the substance as if it were food. When the substance is withdrawn the animal shows definite physical symptoms. It would seem that junk is the only habit-forming drug. Cats cannot be addicted to morphine, as they react to an injection of morphine with acute delirium. Cats have a relatively small quantity of histamine in the blood stream. It would seem that histamine is the defense against morphine, and that cats, lacking this defense, cannot tolerate morphine. Perhaps the mechanism of withdrawal is this: Histamine is produced by the body as a defense against morphine during the period of addiction. When the drug is withdrawn, the body continues to produce histamine.
If you have no histamine-produced symptoms, antihistamine drugs produce no effect. I bought some ampoules 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 effects” 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-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 biologic necessity, like food, water or sex. There is no other substance that becomes in this way a part of the biologic rhythm of the body. When you are junk sick you dream about junk. A curious fact about junk dreams is that something always happens to prevent you from getting a shot. The cops rush in, the needle stops up, the dropper breaks. Anyway, you never get it. I have talked to other users, and I have never known anyone who ever got fixed in a dream. Junk seems to displace the sex drive. When you are on junk the sex drive virtually disappears. When you start to kick you experience sex feelings of adolescent intensity, often spontaneous orgasms.
Junkies live a long time and often look younger than they are. When you stop growing you start dying. An addict never stops growing. Most users periodically kick the habit, which involves shrinking of the organism and replacement of the junk-dependent cells. Scientists recently experimented with a worm that they were able to shrink by withholding food. By periodically shrinking the worm so that it was in continual growth, its life was prolonged indefinitely. A user is in a continual state of shrinking and growing in his daily cycle of shot-need for junk-shot.
Perhaps the reason for the short life of the American business man is that he experiences no cycle of shrinking and growth. He does not exercise, he is never hungry. His life is a one-way process. When his organism reaches maturity it can only start dying.
Opium is formed in the unripe seed pods of the poppy plant. Its function is to protect the seeds from drying out until the plant is ready to die and the seeds are mature. Junk continues to function in the human organism as it did in the seed pod of the poppy. It protects and cushions the body like a warm blanket while death grows to maturity inside. When a junkie is really loaded with junk he looks dead. Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary organism. Junk is a pain killer. A plant has no libido in the human or animal sense. Junk replaces the sex drive. Seeding is the sex of the plant and the function of opium is to delay seeding.
Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life.