Lipton’s Journal/February 14, 1955/610

From Project Mailer

I wonder if once smoking tobacco did not give a similar feeling like Lipton’s. Especially when tobacco first introduced into Europe was regarded as a serious vice. It is only when we take on a serious vice that we are ready to explore. Our sense of vice, of danger and retribution generate the over-determination of paranoia which throws its searchlight into ourselves in order to understand the enemy society, and also casts its searchlight on the world in order again to understand oneself. Danger develops the extremes of one’s personality. If I had not considered Lipton’s such a gamble, I would have been left relatively unmoved by it. So it is not merely that physical action of a depressant or stimulant which causes new states, but rather the over-determination of paranoid lerve which creates the subjective effect.