Then there was the story of the guy who had been a speed-freak, who told me that he’d go into these obsessive quests in the city, diving into dumpsters, frantically driven by the intense intuition that he would find, at the bottom of one, under the layers of garbage and discarded detritus, priceless diamonds. The certainty with which he believed this, when in this extreme state of excess fatigue, was such that nothing could deter him, he’d spend days and nights walking through alleys in the city, climbing into huge dumpsters that sat behind apartment buildings or factories. During these seizures of obsession, he’d neglect to eat, or care for his hygiene, and would become black with the accumulated filth of the garbage, like a chimney sweep, but it didn’t matter. His lust for treasure was overpowering. He also related that when in such feverish highs of speed, he would go into bookstores and voraciously devour whole texts at breakneck speed; he claimed he’d read all of Gray’s Anatomy in a single sitting, though this may have been drug-induced delusion.
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