How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Ah, it is not only brown sugar [heroin] and hashish that comes from Afghanistan into India," he confided, lowering his voice and speaking from the corner of his mouth once more. "There are guns, heavy weapons, explosives. [...] If you control one trade, the drugs, you can influence the other, the guns." (1.2.170)
Heroin might be Lin's drug of choice, but on a macroeconomic level it represents much more than a dangerous way to get high. The same routes that drug runners use to carry the heroin are used to import all kinds of weapons illegally, so drugs become a gateway to arms trade.
Quote #2
He poured the last of the one-litre bottle into his glass and topped it up with the last of the soda. He'd been drinking steadily for more than an hour. His eyes were as veined and bloodshot as the back of a boxer's fist, but the gaze that stared from them was unwavering, and his hands were precise in their movements. (1.2.182)
What can you expect from a guy who basically runs his business from Leopold's bar? Didier is the novel's resident alcoholic, but this is one of the few moments where Lin really takes a moment to notice the effect the drug has on his friend. The physical appearance of his eyes show that his body is being worn down, but the "unwavering" gaze show that he's used to being drunk.
Quote #3
While I'd committed the armed robberies, I was on drugs, addicted to heroin. An opiate fog had settled over everything that I thought and did and even remembered about that time. (1.5.286)
Lin is a criminal, and he's committed awful crimes in his past. However, he seems to qualify that fact with the other fact of his addiction. It's like heroin made him into someone else, so that he didn't really know what he was doing or wasn't himself when he was doing it. What's especially creepy is that, even though he's off heroin now, it still affects his memories.
Quote #4
The Babas were also comprehensively, celestially, and magnificently stoned. They smoked nothing but Kashmiri—the best hashish in the world—grown and produced at the foothills of the Himalayas in Kashmir. And they smoked it all day, and all night, all their lives. (1.8.8)
The Standing Babas are a religious cult that Karla, Prabaker, and Lin visit. This sort of religious tourism is pretty popular around the world, especially when the rituals in question involve consuming some kind of drug. In this case, the devotees smoke hash all day, and their visitors don't mind joining in.
Quote #5
The ride was eerily similar to a hundred stoned drives with friends in Australia and New Zealand when we'd smoked hash or grass, put loud music on the dashboard player, and cruised together in a car. Within my own culture, however, it was mainly the young who smoked and cruised with the music on max. There, I was in the company of a very powerful and influential senior man who was much older than Abdullah, the driver, and me. (2.9.108)
Here's one of the big differences between the society Lin runs with in India and his home in Australia. Khaderbhai is super-refined and elegant, with a big, fancy house and a chauffeur. This doesn't jive at all with Lin's image of a teenaged pothead.
Quote #6
"You know, she saved me from that place—and you did, too—and she's helping me to get clean…to dry out…gotta dry out, Lin…Gilbert…" (2.16.80)
As you can see by the ellipses, Lisa's attempt to "get clean" with Karla's help isn't going so well. She's stoned out of her mind as she says this, mixing up Lin's alias, Gilbert, with the name everyone in Bombay calls him. However, even from within her high she knows that she needs to make a change.
Quote #7
I smoked in those days because, like everyone else in the world who smokes, I wanted to die at least as much as I wanted to live. (3.18.2)
Your health teacher could print some bumper stickers with this doozy and clear the ashtrays for miles. Now that pretty much everybody knows that smoking will kill you, it's only logical that anyone who smokes must not care too much about dying. It's either that, or they're in denial.
Quote #8
The couple was awake and sullen and angry with us, despite the girl's earlier plea for help, because we'd disturbed the pleasure of their stone. (3.19.60)
Lin's past as a heroin addict comes in handy when he has to revive an overdosed tourist. But there's no thanks in that dirty job. Even though, on some level, the couple must be glad they survived, they're more worried about the interruption of their drug vacation than about showing their gratitude.
Quote #9
Heroin is a sensory deprivation tank for the soul. Floating on the Dead Sea of the drug stone, there's no sense of pain, no regret or shame, no feelings of guilt or grief, no depression, and no desire. (4.30.1)
Lin goes back to heroin when he leaves Karla and, if the term "sensory deprivation tank for the soul" is any indication, it was to escape from his powerful emotions and feelings of loss. The Dead Sea is so salty that you can float in its waters, and when he's high Lin doesn't have to make any effort whatsoever, just bobbing along.
Quote #10
Two full days and nights into the torment, I knew I wasn't going to make it. Most of the vomiting and the diarrhea had passed, but the pain and anxieties were worse, much worse, every minute. Beneath the screaming in my blood there was a calm, insistent voice: You can stop this…you can fix this…you can stop this…take the money…get a fix…you can stop this pain… (4.30.194)
Um, gross. Sorry, but what goes up must come down, and getting high's no different. Coming off of heroin is pretty painful, as you can see in Lin's description or in the most terrifying scenes of Trainspotting.