novocaine of the soul
This is like novocaine of the soul. I’m like: why was I spending all that time doing one-hitters when this is really what I call feeling better.
Context
The addict's eternal first discovery, spoken at the exact instant it's made: that the relief works, that it works better than anything tried before, and that this re-ranks every prior substance in a single thought. Novocaine of the soul is the whole seduction in four words — not pleasure but the abolition of pain, the thing the suicidally depressed woman has been chasing, delivered at last and immediately mistaken for the answer.