Late one night, I compounded the elements. They boil and smoke in the glass. I knew well I risked death, for this drug would control the very fortress of who I am. I drank the potion from the flask and admired myself in the mirror for I felt like a god in my own skin. A cure to keep me on top of the world, to free me from the reality I'm in. I awoke in the morning with a slumbering conscience. My creation waits upon the shelf. Double the dose. So begins the struggle of Man vs. Self. My every act and every thought, consumed by this drink. My reflection in a window. Thin and pale, crooked grin. I could barely recognize him. I'd become a stranger in my own skin. I have an angel on my shoulder and a demon on the other. Whispering in my ears. I only hear what I want to hear. I am my doctor and my patient. And now my remedy became my enemy. With the same craving I sought to flee reality, it seems this high is doing the same thing right back to me. This old medicine has let the demons in. "But there ain't no bottle in all the world like that dear little bottle of mine." Back alley existence. What I have become? A wash-up, a has-been. My head hung low in a gutter's puddle. I saw a monster in my own skin. I was not consuming something. Something was consuming me. I wish I would have been content before this all began. I threw it all away. I destroyed. Didn't create. Here is the journal of a mad scientist's end. "Here then, as I lay down the pen And proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of an unhappy man to an end."