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When the clock struck twelve at midnight, and I knew that for the first time in many years I had lived for an entire day without opium, it excited no surprise or exultation. The capacity for an emotion of any kind was exhausted. I seemed as little capable of a sentiment as a man well could be, this side of his winding-sheet. I knew, of course, that in these forty days save one, I had worked out the problem, How to leave off opium, and that I had apparently attained a final deliverance: but it was several weeks before I appreciated with any confidence the completion of the task I had undertaken.

Although the opium habit was broken, it was only to leave me in a condition of much feebleness and suffering. I could not sleep, I could not sit quietly, I could not lie in any one posture for many minutes together. The nervous system was thoroughly deranged. Weak as I had become, I felt a continual desire to walk. The weather was unfavorable, but I managed to get several miles of exercise almost daily. But this relief was limited to four or five hours at most, and left the remainder of the day a weary weight upon my hands. The aversion to reading had become such that some months elapsed before I took up a book with any pleasure. Even the daily papers were more than I could well fix my attention upon, except in the briefest and most cursory way. Within a week, however, the sense of acute pain rapidly diminished, but the irritability, impatience, and incapacity to do any thing long remained unrelieved. The disordered liver became apparently more disordered with the progress of time, producing such effects upon the bowels as may with more fitness be told a physician than recorded here. The tonsils of the throat were swollen, the throat itself inflamed, while the chest was penetrated with what seemed like pulsations of prickly heat. There was also a sense of fullness in the muscles of the arms and legs which seemed to be permeated, if I may so express it, with heated electricity. The general condition of the nervous system will be sufficiently indicated by the statement that it was between three or four months before I could hold a pen with any degree of steadiness. Meantime, singular as it may seem, the appearance of health and vigor had astonishingly increased. I had gained more than twenty pounds in weight, partly, I suppose, the result of leaving off opium and tobacco, and partly the consequence of the insatiable appetite with which I was constantly followed. Within a month after the close of the opium strife, I was repeatedly congratulated upon my healthy, vigorous condition. Few men in the entire city bore about them more of the appearance of perfect health, and fewer still were probably in such a state of exhausted vitality.

During the time I was leaving off opium I had labored under the impression that the habit once mastered, a speedy restoration to health would follow. I was by no means prepared, therefore, for the almost inappreciable gain in the weeks which succeeded, and in some anxiety consulted a number of physicians, who each suggested in a timid way the trial, some of strychnine, some of valerian, some of lupuline, hyoscyamus, ignatia, belladonna, and what not. I do not know that I derived the slightest benefit from any of these prescriptions, or from any other therapeutic agency, unless I except the good effects for a few days of bitters, and of cold shower-baths from a tank in which ice was floating.

The most judicious of the medical gentlemen whose aid I invoked, was, I think, the one who replied to my inquiry for his bill, "What for? I have done you no good, and have learned more from you than you have from me."

This constitutes the entire history of my medical experience, and is mentioned as being the only, and a very small adjunct to the great remedy--patient, persistent, obstinate endurance. So exceeding slow has been the process toward the restoration of a natural condition of the system, that writing now, at the expiration of more than a year since opium was finally abandoned, it seems to me very uncertain when, if ever, this result will be reached. Between four and five months elapsed before I was at all capable of commanding my attention or controlling the nervous impatience of mind and body. I then assented to a proposal which involved the necessity of a good deal of steady work, in the hope that constant occupation would divert the attention from the nervousness under which I suffered and would restore the self-reliance which had so long failed me. It was a foolish experiment, and might have proved a fatal one. The business I had undertaken required a clear head and average health, and I had neither. The sleep was short and imperfect, rarely exceeding two or three hours. The chest was in a constant heat and very sore, while the previous bilious difficulties seemed in no way overcome. The mouth was parched, the tongue swollen, and a low fever seemed to have taken entire possession of the system, with special and peculiar exasperations in the muscles of the arms and legs.

The difficulty of thinking to any purpose was only equalled by the reluctance with which I could bring myself to the task of holding a pen. For a few weeks, however, the necessity of not wholly disgracing myself forced me on after a poor fashion; but at the end of two months I was a used-up man. I would sit for hours looking listlessly upon a sheet of paper, helpless of originating an idea upon the commonest of subjects, and with a prevailing sensation of owning a large emptiness in the brain, which seemed chiefly filled with a stupid wonder when all this would end.

More than an entire year has now passed, in which I have done little else than to put the preceding details into shape from brief memoranda made at the time of the experiment. While the physical agony ceased almost immediately after the opium was abandoned, the irritation of the system still continues. I do not know how better to describe my present state than by the use of language which professional men may regard as neither scientific nor accurate, but which will express, I hope, to unprofessional readers the idea I wish to convey, when I say that the entire system seems to me not merely to have been poisoned, but saturated with poison. Had some virus been transfused into the blood, which carried with it to every nerve of sensation a sense of painful, exasperating unnaturalness, the feeling would not, I imagine, be unlike what I am endeavoring to indicate.

ADDENDA.--At the time of writing the preceding narrative I had supposed that the entire story was told, and that the intelligent reader, should this record ever see the light, would naturally infer, as I myself imagined would be the case, that the unnatural condition of the body would soon become changed into a state of average health. In this I was mistaken. So tenacious and obstinate in its hold upon its victim is the opium disease, that even after the lapse of ten years its poisonous agency is still felt. Without some reference to these remoter consequences of the hasty abandonment of confirmed habits of opium-eating, the chief object of this narrative as a guide to others would fail of being secured. While unquestionably the heaviest part of the suffering resulting from such a change of habit belongs to the few weeks in which the patient is abandoning opium, it ought not to be concealed that this brief period by no means comprises the limit within which he will find himself obliged to maintain the most rigid watch over himself, lest the feeling of desperation which at times assaults him from the hope of immediate physical restoration disappointed and indefinitely postponed, should drive him back to his old habits. Indeed, with some temperaments, the greatest danger of a relapse comes in, not during the process of abandonment, but after the habit has been broken. Great bodily pain serves only to rouse up some natures to a more earnest strife, and, as their sufferings become more intense, the determination not to yield gains an unnatural strength. The mind is vindicating itself as the master of the body. While in this state, tortures and the fagot are powerless to extort groans or confessions from the racked or half-consumed martyr. Many a sufferer has borne the agony of the boots or the thumb-screw without flinching, whose courage has given way under the less painful but more unendurable punishment of prolonged imprisonment. In the one case all a man's powers of resistance are roused; he feels that his manhood is at stake, and he endures as men will endure when they see that the question how far they are their own masters, is at issue. There are, I think, a great number of men and women who would go unflinchingly to the stake in vindication of a principle, whose resolution, somewhere in the course of a long, solitary, and indefinite imprisonment, would break down into a discreditable compromise of opinions for which they were unquestionably willing to die.

In the same way a man will for a time endure even frightful suffering in relinquishing a pernicious habit, while he may fail to hold up his determination against the assaults of the apparently never-ending irritation, discomfort, pain, and sleeplessness which may be counted on as being, sometimes at least, among the remoter consequences of the struggle in which he has engaged. I wish it, however, distinctly understood that I do not suppose that the experience of others whose use of opium had been similar to my own, would necessarily correspond to mine in all or even in many respects. Opium is the Proteus of medicine, and science has not yet succeeded in tearing away the many masks it wears, nor in tracing the marvellously diversified aspects it is capable of assuming. Among many cases of the relinquishment of opium with which I have been made acquainted, nothing is more perplexing than the difference of the specific consequences, as they are exhibited in persons of different temperaments and habits. For such differences I do not pretend to account. That is the business of the thoroughly educated physician, and no unprofessional man, however wide his personal experience, has the right to dogmatize or even to express with much confidence settled opinions upon the subject. My object will be fully attained if I succeed in giving a just and truthful impression of the more marked final consequences of the hasty disuse of opium in this single case, leaving it to medical men to explain the complicated relations of an opium-saturated constitution to the free and healthy functions of life.

In my own case, the most marked among the later consequences of the disease of opium, some of which remain to the present time and seem to be permanently engrafted upon the constitution, have been these:

I mention without hesitancy these consequences of the abandonment of opium, from the belief that any person really in earnest in his desire to relinquish the habit will be more likely to persevere by knowing at the start exactly what obstacles he may meet in his progress toward perfect recovery, than by having it gradually revealed to him, and that at times when his body and mind are both enfeebled by what he has passed through. With a single exception, the dismost serious one I have been obliged to encounter. Whether it is one of the specific effects of the disuse of opium, or only one of the many general results of a disordered constitution, I do not know.

I can only say in my own case, that after the lapse of years, this particular difficulty is not wholly overcome. This electric condition, so to call it, still continues a serious annoyance. But when it occurs, the pain is of less duration, and gradually, but very slowly, is of diminished frequency. Violent exercise will sometimes relieve it; a long walk has often the same effect. The use of stimulants brings alleviation for a time, but there seems to be no permanent remedy except in the perfect restoration of the system by time from this effect of the wear and tear of opium upon the nerves. Irregularity in the action of the liver, while singularly marked in the earlier stages of the experiment, and continuing for years to make its agency manifestly felt, is in a considerable degree checked and controlled by a judicious use of calomel.

The condition of the digestive organs is less impaired than I should have supposed possible, judging from the experience of others. A moderate degree of attention to the quality of what is eaten, with proper care to avoid what is not easily digested, with the exercise of habitual self-control in respect to quantity, suffices to prevent, for the most part, all unendurable feelings of discomfort in this part of the system. Whether the habitually febrile condition of the mouth, and the swollen state of the tongue, is referable to a disturbed action of the stomach or of the liver I can not say. It is certain that none of the effects of opium-eating are more marked or more obstinately tenacious in their hold upon the system than these. I barely advert to the frequent impossibility of retaining some kinds of food upon the stomach, which has been one unpleasant part of my experience, because I doubt whether this return of a difficulty which began in childhood has any necessary connection with the use of opium. For many years before I knew any thing of the drug I had been a daily sufferer from this cause. Indeed the use of opium seemed to control this tendency, and it was only when the remedy was abandoned that the old annoyance returned. For a few months the stomach rejected every kind of food; but in less than a year, and subsequently to the present time, this has been of only occasional ocurrence.

I am also at a loss how far to connect the disuse of opium with the lancinating pains which have troubled me since the time to which I refer. These pains began long before I had recourse to opium, they did not cease their frequent attacks while opium was used, nor have they failed to make their potency felt since opium was abandoned. While it is not improbable that the neuralgic difficulties of my childhood might have remained to the present time, even if I had never made use of opium, I think that the experience of all who have undergone the trial shows that similar pains are invariably attendant upon the disuse of opium. How long their presence might be protracted with persons not antecedently troubled in this way, is a question I can not answer. I infer from what little has been recorded, and from what I have learned in other ways, that the reforming opium-eater must make up his mind to a protracted encounter with this great enemy to his peace. That the struggle of others with this difficulty will be prolonged as mine has been I do not believe, unless they have been subjected for a lifetime to pains connected with disorder in the nervous system.

The unnatural sensitiveness to cold to which I have alluded is rather a discomfort than any thing else. It merely makes a higher temperature necessary for enjoyment, but in no other respect can it be regarded as deserving special mention. With the thermometer standing at 80? to 85? the sensation of agreeable warmth is perfect; with the mercury at 70? or even higher, there is a good deal of the feeling that the bones are inadequately protected by the flesh, that the clothing is too limited in quantity, and in winter that the coal-dealer is hardly doing you justice.

The cold perspiration down the spine, which was so marked a sensation during the worst of the trial, has not yet wholly left the system, but is greatly limited in the extent of surface it affects and in the frequency of its return.

The tendency to impatience and irritability of temper to which I have adverted is by far the most humiliating of the effects resulting from the abandonment of opium. Men differ very widely both in their liability to these excesses of temper as well as in their power to control them; but under the aggravations which necessarily attend an entire change of habit, this natural tendency, whether it be small or great, to hastiness of mind is greatly increased. So long as the disturbing causes remain, whether these be the state of the liver or the stomach, or a want of sufficient sleep, or the excited condition of the nervous system, the patient will find himself called upon for the exercise of all his self-control to keep in check his exaggerated sensibility to the daily annoyances of life.

In connection with this matter something should be said on the subject of dreaming, to which De Quincey has given so marked a prominence in his "Confessions" and "Suspiris de Profundis." In my own case, neither when beginning the use of opium, nor while making use of it in the largest quantities and after the habit had long been established, nor while engaged in the painful process of relinquishing it, nor at any time subsequently, have I had any experience worth narrating of the influence of the drug over the dreaming faculty. On the contrary, I doubt whether many men of mature age know so little of this peculiar state of mind as myself. The conditions in this respect, imposed by my own peculiarities of constitution, have been either no sleep sufficiently sound as to interfere with the consciousness of what was passing, or mere restlessness, or sleep so profound as to leave behind it no trace of the mind's activity. While it is therefore certain that this exaggeration of the dreaming faculty is not necessarily connected with the use of opium, but is rather to be referred to some peculiarity of temperament or organization in De Quincey himself, I find myself in turn at a loss to know how far to regard other phenomena to which I have previously alluded as the natural and necessary consequences of opium, or how far they may be owing to peculiarities of constitution in myself. Opium-eaters have said but little on the subject. The medical profession, so far as I have conversed with them, and I have consulted with some of the most eminent, are not generally well informed on any thing beyond the specific effects of the drug as witnessed in ordinary medication. In the absence of sufficient authority, it may be safer to say that the remoter consequences of the disuse of opium consist in a general disorder and derangement of the nervous system, exhibiting itself in such particular symptoms as are most accordant with the temperament, constitutional weaknesses, and personal idiosyncrasies of the patient. That some considerable suffering must be regarded as unavoidable seems to be placed beyond question from the nature of the trial to which the body has been subjected, as well as from what little has been said on the subject by those who have relinquished the habit.

The inaptitude for steady exertion is not merely the consequence of this occasional feeling of exhaustion, but is for a time the inevitable result of the accumulated pain and weakness to which his system, not yet restored to health, is still subject. This impatience of continued application to work, which is common to all opium-eaters, and which does not cease with the abandonment of the habit, seems to result in the first case from some specific relation between the drug and the meditative faculties, promoting a state of habitual reverie and day-dreaming, utterly indisposing the opium-user for any occupation which will disturb the calm current of his thoughts, and in the other, proceeding from the direct disorder of the nervous organization itself. Strange as it may seem, the very thought of exertion will often waken in the reforming opium-eater acute nervous pains, which cease only as the purpose is abandoned. In other cases, where there is no special nervous suffering at the time, work is easy and pleasant even beyond what is natural.

If to these discomforts be added a prevailing tendency to a febrile condition of body, together with permanent disorder in portions of the secretory system, the catalogue of annoyances with which the long-reformed opium-eater may have to contend is completed. This statement is not made to exaggerate the suffering consequent upon the disuse of opium, but is made on the ground that a full apprehension of what the patient may be called upon to go through will best enable him to make up his mind to one resolute, unflinching effort for the redemption of himself from his bad habits.

So far as the body is concerned, there is much in my experience which induces me to give a general assent to the opinion expressed by a medical man of great reputation whom I repeatedly consulted in reference to the discouraging slowness of my own restoration to perfect health. "I can not see," he said, "that your constitution has been permanently injured; but you were a great many years getting into this state, and I think it will take nearly as many to get you out of it."

It may not be amiss to add that those opium-eaters whose circumstances exempt them from harassing cares, who meet only with kindness and sympathy from friends, and who have resources for enjoyment within themselves, have in respect to these subsequent inconveniences greatly the advantage of those whose position and circumstances are less fortunate.

A further condition lies in the attempt being made under the most favorable circumstances in respect to absolute leisure from business of every kind. That nothing can be accomplished by persons whose time is not at their own command, by a graduated effort protracted through many months, I do not say, for I do not believe it; but any speedy relinquishment of opium--that is, within a month or two--seems to me to be wholly impossible, except to those who are so situated that they can give up their whole time and attention to the effort.

This effort should be made with the advice and under the eye of an intelligent physician. So far as I have had opportunity to know, the profession generally is not well informed on the subject. In my own case I certainly found no one who seemed familiar with the phenomena pertaining to the relinquishment of opium, or whose suggestions indicated even in cases where the physician has had no experience whatever in this class of disorders, he can, if a well-educated man, bring his medical knowledge and medical reasoning to bear upon the various states, both of body and mind, which the varying sufferings of the patient may make known to him. Were there, indeed, no professional helps to be secured by such consultation, it is still of infinite service to the patient to know some one to whom he can frequently impart the history of his struggle and the progress he is making. Such confidence may do much to encourage the patient, and no one is so proper a person in whom to repose this confidence as an intelligent physician.

The amount of time which should be devoted to the experiment must depend very greatly upon these considerations--the constitution of the patient, the length of time which has elapsed since the habit was formed, and the quantity habitually taken. When the habit is of recent date, and the daily dose has not been large--say not more than ten or twelve grains--if the patient has average health, his emancipation from the evil may be attained in a comparatively short period, though not without many sharp pangs and many wakeful nights which will call for the exercise of all his resolution.

The final decision of the question, How long a time should be allowed for the final relinquishment of the drug? must, I imagine, be left to a wider experience than has yet been recorded. The general strength of the constitution, the force of the will, the degree of nervous sensibility, together with the external circumstances of one's life, have all much to do with its proper explication.

The general directions I should be disposed to suggest for the observance of the confirmed opium-eater would be something as follows:

In the third week a further gain of ten grains can the more easily be made by still further dividing the daily portion into an increased number of parts, say ten. The feeling of restlessness and irritability by this time will have become somewhat annoying, and the actual struggle will be seen to have commenced. It will doubtless require at this point some persistence of character to bear up against the increased impatience, both of body and spirit, which marks this stage of the descent. The feelings will endeavor to palm off upon the judgment a variety of reasons why, for a time, a larger quantity should be taken; but this is merely the effect of the diminished amount of the stimulant. Sleep will probably be found to be of short continuance as well as a good deal broken. Reading has ceased to interest, and a fidgety, fault-finding temper not unlikely has begun to exhibit itself. At this point, I am satisfied, most opium-eaters who have endeavored in vain to renounce the habit, have broken down. Their resolution has failed them not because they were unable to stand much greater punishment than had yet been inflicted, but because they yielded to the impression that some other time would prove more opportune for the final experiment. Under this delusion they have foolishly thrown away the benefit of their past self-control, with the certainty that should the trial be again made, they would once more be assailed by a similar temptation. But if this stage of the process has been safely passed, the next--that of reducing the daily quantity from thirty grains to twenty-five, still dividing the day's allowance into ten portions--would probably have added little aggravation to the uncomfortable feeling which already existed, but not without some conscious addition, on the other hand, to their enjoyment from the partially successful result of the experiment. Thus in four weeks a very substantial gain, by the reduction of the needed quantity from eighty grains to twenty-five, would have been attained.

Considerations of this nature, however, are of too general a character to be of much service to one enduring the misery of the reforming opium-eater. He has now arrived at a point where he is obliged to ask himself when and how the contest is to end. He has succeeded in abandoning three-quarters of the opium to which he has so long been accustomed. A few weeks have enabled him to accomplish this much. He endures, indeed, great discomfort by day and by night; but hope has been re-awakened; his mind has recovered greater activity than it has known for years; and, on the whole, he feels that he has been greatly the gainer from the contest.

I have not ventured to say in how short a time confirmed habits of opium-eating may be abandoned. In my own case it was thirty-nine days, but with my present experience I should greatly prefer to extend the time to at least sixty days; and this chiefly with reference to the violent effects upon the constitution produced by the suddenness of the change of habit. Some constitutions may possibly require less time and some probably, more. While I regard the abandonment of the first three-quarters of the accustomed allowance as being a much easier task than the last quarter, and one which can be accomplished with comparative impunity in a brief period, I would allow at least twice the time for the experiment of dispensing with the last quarter; unless, indeed, I should be apprehensive that my resolution might break down through the absence of the excitement which is unquestionably afforded by the feeling that you are engaged in a deadly but doubtful conflict. So far, also, as can be inferred from cases subsequently narrated in this volume, the probability of success would seem to be enhanced by devoting a longer time to the trial. It can not, however, be too often repeated, that however slow or however rapid the pace may be, the rule to be rigidly observed is this: Never to increase the minimum dose that has once been attained. This is the only rule of safety, and by adhering to it, persons in infirm health, or with weakened powers of resolution, will ultimately succeed in their efforts.

I subjoin my own record of the quantity of opium daily consumed, for the possible encouragement of such opium-eaters as may be disposed to make trial of their own resources in the endurance of bodily and mental distress.

In respect to food it seems impossible to lay down any general rule. De Quincey advises beefsteak, not too much cooked, and stale bread as the chief diet, and doubtless this was the best diet for him. Yet it is not the less true that "what is one man's meat is another man's poison," and food that is absolutely harmless to one may disorder the entire digestion of another. Roast pork, mince pies, and cheese do not, I believe, rank high with the Faculty for ease of digestion, yet I have found them comparatively innoxious, while poultry, milk, oysters, fish, some kinds of vegetables, and even dry toast have caused me serious inconvenience. The appetite of the recovering opium-eater will probably be voracious and not at all discriminating during the earlier stages of his experiment, and will continue unimpaired even when the stomach begins to be fastidious as to what it will receive. Probably no safer rule can be given than to limit the quantity eaten as far as practicable, and to use only such food as in each particular case is found to be most easy of digestion.

Too much prominence can not be given to bodily exercise as intimately connected with the recovery of the patient. Without this it seems to me doubtful whether a person could withstand the extreme irritation of his nervous system. In his worst state he can not sit still; he must be moving. The complication of springs in the famous Kilmansegge leg, is nothing compared with the necesity for motion which is developed in the limbs of the recovering opium-eater. Whatever his health, whatever his spirits, whatever the weather, walk he must. Ten miles before breakfast will be found a moderate allowance for many months after the habit has been subdued. A patient who could afford to give up three months of his time after the opium had been entirely discarded, to the perfect recovery of his health, could probably turn it to no better account than by stretching out on a pedestrian excursion of a thousand miles and back. This would be at the rate of nearly twenty-six miles a day, allowing Sunday as a day of rest. This advice is seriously given for the consideration of those who can command the time for such a thorough process of restoration. Nor should any weight be given to the objection that the body is in too enfeebled a state to make it safe to venture upon such an experiment. Account for it as physiologists may, it is certain that the debilitating effects of leaving off opium much more rapidly pass away from the lower extremities than from the rest of the body. At no time subsequent to my mastery of opium have I found any difficulty in accomplishing the longest walks; on the contrary they have been taken with entire ease and pleasure. Yet to this day, any considerable exercise of the other muscles is attended with extreme debility. In the absence of facilities for walking, gymnastic exercise is not wholly without benefit, and if this exercise is followed by a cold bath, some portion of the insupportable languor will be removed. Walking, however, is the great panacea, nor can it well be taken in excess. So important is this element in the restorative process that it may well be doubted whether without its aid a confirmed opium-eater could be restored to health.

It is useless for any person to think that he can break off even the least inveterate of his habits without effort, or the more obstinate ones without a struggle. Wine, spirits, tobacco, after years of habitual use, require a degree of resolution which is sometimes found to be beyond the resources of the will. Much more does opium, whose hold upon the system is vastly more tenacious than all these combined, call for a resolute determination prepared to meet all the possible consequences that pertain to a complete and perfect mastery of the habit. It should be remembered, however, that the experience here recorded is that resulting from years of large and uninterrupted use of opium. The entire system had necessarily conformed itself to the artificial habit. For years the proper action of the nervous, muscular, digestive, and secretory system had been impeded and forced in an unnatural direction. In time all the vital functions had conformed as far as possible to the necessity imposed upon them. Scarce a function of the body that had not been daily drilled into a highly artificial adaptation to the conditions imposed upon the system by the use of opium. Nature, indeed, for a time rebels and resists the attempt to impose unnatural habitudes upon her action; but there is a limit to her resistance, and she is then found to possess a marvellous power of reconciling the processes of life with the disturbance and disorder of almost the entire human organization. This power of adaptation, while it unquestionably lures on to the continued indulgence of all kinds of bad habits, is, on the other hand, the only hope and assurance the sufferer from such causes can have of ultimate recovery from his danger. If it requires years to establish bad habits in the animal economy, why should we expect that they can be wholly eradicated except by a reversal, in these respects, of the entire current of the life, or without allowing a commensurate time for that perfect restoration of the disordered functions which is expected?

If this view of the case is not encouraging to the veteran consumer of opium, it certainly is not without its suggestive utility to that larger class whose use of opium has been comparatively limited both in time and quantity. Fortunately, much the greater number of opium-eaters take the drug in small quantities or have made use of it for only a limited period. In their case the process of recovery is relatively easy; the functions of their physical organization still act for the most part in a normal way; they have to retrace comparatively few steps and for comparatively a short time. Even to the inveterate consumer of the drug it has been made manifest that he may emancipate himself from his bondage if he will manfully accept the conditions upon which alone he can accomplish it. In the worst conceivable cases it is at least a choice between evils; if he abandons opium, he may count upon much suffering of body, many sleepless nights, a disordered nervous system, and at times great prostration of strength. If he continues the habit, there remains, as long as life lasts, the irresolute will, the bodily languor, the ever-present sense of hopeless, helpless ruin. The opium-eater must take his choice between the two. On the one hand is hope, continually brightening in the future--on the other is the inconceivable wretchedness of one from whom hope has forever fled.

DE QUINCEY'S "CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER."

Under this title an article appeared in the "London Magazine" for December, 1821, which attracted very general attention from its literary merit and the novelty of its revelations. So considerable was the interest excited in these "Confessions" that the article was speedily republished in book form both in London and this country. The reading public outside of the medical profession were thus for the first time made generally acquainted with the tremendous potency of a drug whose fascinations have since become almost as well known to the inhabitants of England and America as to the people of India or China. The general properties of the drug had of course been familiar to intelligent men from the days of Vasco de Gama, but how easily the habit of using it could be acquired, and with what difficulty when acquired it could be left off, were subjects respecting which great obscurity rested on the minds even of medical men. Such parts only of these "Confessions" as have relation to De Quincey's habits as an opium-eater, have been selected for republication; such extracts from his other writings are added as embody his entire experience of opium so far as he has given it to the world.

Guilt and misery shrink by a natural instinct from public notice: they court privacy and solitude; and, even in the choice of a grave, will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the church-yard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of man, and wishing--in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth--

'Humbly to express A penitential loneliness.'

"That those eat now who never ate before; And those who always ate, now eat the more."

I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater, and have suffered very unjustly in the opinion of my acquaintance, from being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which I shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this practice purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. True it is that for nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium for the sake of the exquisite pleasure it gave me; but, so long as I took it with this view, I was effectually protected from all material bad consequences by the necessity of interposing long intervals between the several acts of indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable sensations. It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest degree, that I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet. In the twenty-eighth year of my age a most painful affection of the stomach, which I had first experienced about ten years before, attacked me in great strength. This affection had originally been caused by the extremities of hunger suffered in my boyish days. During the season of hope and redundant happiness which succeeded it had slumbered; for the three following years it had revived at intervals; and now, under unfavorable circumstances, from depression of spirits, it attacked me with a violence that yielded to no remedies but opium.

Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error in respect to opium, I shall notice very briefly a second and a third; which are, that the elevation of spirits produced by opium is necessarily followed by a proportionate depression, and that the natural and even immediate consequence of opium is torpor and stagnation, animal and mental. The first of these errors I shall content myself with simply denying; assuring my reader that for ten years, during which I took opium at intervals, the day succeeding to that on which I allowed myself this luxury was always a day of unusually good spirits.

With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, or rather to accompany the practice of opium-eating, I deny that also. Certainly, opium is classed under the head of narcotics, and some such effect it may produce in the end, but the primary effects of opium are always, and in the highest degree, to excite and stimulate the system. This first stage of its action always lasted with me, during my novitiate, for upward of eight hours, so that it must be the fault of the opium-eater himself if he does not so time his exhibition of the dose as that the whole weight of its narcotic influence may descend upon his sleep.

Thus I have shown that opium does not, of necessity, produce inactivity or torpor. On the contrary it often led me into markets and theatres. Yet, in candor, I will admit that markets and theatres are not the appropriate haunts of the opium-eater when in the divinest state incident to his enjoyment. In that state crowds become an oppression to him; music, even, too sensual and gross. He naturally seeks solitude and silence as indispensable conditions of those trances, or profoundest reveries, which are the crown and consummation of what opium can do for human nature.

The issue of the struggle in 1813 was what I have mentioned; and from this date the reader is to consider me as a regular and confirmed opium-eater, of whom to ask whether on any particular day he had or had not taken opium, would be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration, or the heart fulfilled its functions. Now then, reader, from 1813, where all this time we have been sitting down and loitering, rise up, if you please, and walk forward about three years more. Now draw up the curtain, and you shall see me in a new character.

"That moveth altogether, if it move at all."

Now, then, I was again happy. I now took only one thousand drops of laudanum per day--and what was that? A latter spring had come to close up the season of youth. My brain performed its functions as healthily as ever before. I read Kant again, and again I understood him, or fancied that I did. Again my feelings of pleasure expanded themselves to all around me. And, by the way, I remember about this time a little incident, which I mention because trifling as it was the reader will soon meet it again in my dreams, which it influenced more fearfully than could be imagined. One day a Malay knocked at my door. What business a Malay could have to transact among English mountains I can not conjecture, but possibly he was on his road to a sea-port about forty miles distant.

The servant who opened the door to him was a young girl born and bred among the mountains, who had never seen an Asiatic dress of any sort. His turban, therefore, confounded her not a little; and as it turned out that his attainments in English were exactly of the same extent as hers in the Malay, there seemed to be an impassable gulf fixed between all communication of ideas, if either party had happened to possess any. In this dilemma, the girl, recollecting the reputed learning of her master , came and gave me to understand that there was a sort of demon below whom she clearly imagined that my art could exorcise from the house. I did not immediately go down, but when I did the group which presented itself--arranged as it was by accident--though not very elaborate, took hold of my fancy and my eye in a way that none of the statuesque attitudes exhibited in the ballets at the opera-house, though so ostentatiously complex, had ever done. In a cottage kitchen, but panelled on the wall with dark wood that from age and rubbing resembled oak, and looking more like a rustic hall of entrance than a kitchen, stood the Malay, his turban and loose trowsers of dingy white relieved upon the dark panelling. He had placed himself nearer to the girl than she seemed to relish, though her native spirit of mountain intrepidity contended with the feeling of simple awe which her countenance expressed as she gazed upon the tiger-cat before her. And a more striking picture there could not be imagined than the beautiful English face of the girl, and its exquisite fairness, together with her erect and independent attitude, contrasted with the sallow and bilious skin of the Malay, enamelled or veneered with mahogany by marine air, his small, fierce, restless eyes, thin lips, slavish gestures, and adorations. Half hidden by the ferocious-looking Malay was a little child from a neighboring cottage, who had crept in after him and was now in the act of reverting its head and gazing upward at the turban and the fiery eyes beneath it, while with one hand he caught at the dress of the young woman for protection.

My knowledge of the Oriental tongues is not remarkably extensive, being, indeed, confined to two words--the Arabic word for barley and the Turkish for opium , which I have learned from Anastasius--and as I had neither a Malay dictionary, nor even Adelung's "Mithridates," which might have helped me to a few words, I addressed him in some lines from the Iliad; considering that of such language as I possessed, the Greek, in point of longitude, came geographically nearest to an Oriental one. He worshiped me in a devout manner, and replied in what I suppose was Malay. In this way I saved my reputation with my neighbors, for the Malay had no means of betraying the secret He lay down upon the floor for about an hour and then pursued his journey. On his departure I presented him with a piece of opium. To him, as an Orientalist, I concluded that opium must be familiar, and the expression of his face convinced me that it was. Nevertheless, I was struck with some little consternation when I saw him suddenly raise his hand to his mouth, and bolt the whole, divided into three pieces, at one mouthful. The quantity was enough to kill three dragoons and their horses, and I felt some alarm for the poor creature. But what could be done? I had given him the opium in compassion for his solitary life, on recollecting that if he had travelled on foot from London it must be nearly three weeks since he could have exchanged a thought with any human being. I could not think of violating the laws of hospitality by having him seized and drenched with an emetic, and thus frightening him into a notion that we were going to sacrifice him to some English idol. No; there was clearly no help for it. He took his leave, and for some days I felt anxious; but as I never heard of any Malay being found dead, I became convinced that he was used to opium, and that I must have done him the service I designed by giving him one night of respite from the pains of wandering.

This incident I have digressed to mention because this Malay fastened afterward upon my dreams, and brought other Malays with him, worse than himself, that ran "a-muck" at me, and led me into a world of troubles.

And now, reader, we have run through all the ten categories of my condition as it stood about 1816-1817, up to the middle of which latter year I judge myself to have been a happy man.

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