A Scanner Darkly

by Philip K. Dick

“What the fuck are you doing there all day in the shower with the goddamn dog?”

You put on a bishop’s robe and miter, he pondered, and walk around in that, and people bow and genuflect and like that, and try to kiss your ring, if not your ass, and pretty soon you’re a bishop.

Someday, he thought, it’ll be mandatory that we all sell the McDonald’s hamburger as well as buy it; we’ll sell it back and forth to each other forever from our living rooms. That way we won’t even have to go outside.

“. . . I know, if I just had another hit, that my brain would repair itself.”

Drug addict mentality.

And from then on, Jerry Fabin’s mother and father continually compare him unfavorably with his older brother, who is an aphid.

where straights probably would have had the animals “put to sleep,” a straight-type term if there ever was one—and also an old Syndicate term as well, for murder.

Without any purpose. Just a lump of flesh grinding along, eating, drinking, sleeping, working, crapping.”

Pretty much sums up my life.

Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car.