The best thing is the combined effect of nicotine with alcohol, greater than the sum of the two parts.
It's better to have a malign providence than an indifferent one.
If not just the brain but the quirks that made the individual were composed of recycled matter only, it was hard to be sure where the edges of one such being ended and another person began.
The thing about opium is that it makes pain or difficulty unimaginable.
It's only after the change is fully formed that you can see what's happened.
The physical shock took away the pain of being.