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 (who will certainly need all the information on the subject
that can be given them) 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:
1. Pressure upon the muscles of the limbs and in the extremities,
sometimes as of electricity apparently accumulated there under a
strong mechanical force.
2. A disordered condition of the liver, exhibiting itself in the
variety of uncomfortable modes in which that organ, when acting
irregularly, is accustomed to assert its grievances.
3. A sensitive condition of the stomach, rejecting many kinds of food
which are regarded by medical men as simple and easy of digestion.
4. Acute shooting pains, confined to no one part of the body.
5. An unnatural sensitiveness to cold.
6. Frequent cold perspiration in parts of the body.
7. A tendency to impatience and irritability of temper, with paroxysms
of excitement wholly foreign to the natural disposition.
8. Deficiency and irregularity of sleep.
9. Occasional prostration of strength.
10. Inaptitude for steady exertion.
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.
Intimately connected with the preceding is the frequent recurrence of
sleepless nights, which seem invariably to attend upon the abandonment
of the habit. Possibly some part of this state of agitated wakefulness
may pertain to the natural temperament of the patient, but this
tendency is greatly aggravated by the condition of the nerves, so
thoroughly shattered by the violent struggle to oblige the system to
dispense with the soothing influence of the drug upon which it has so
long relied. Whatever method others may have found to counteract this
infirmity, I have been able as yet to find no remedy for
it. Especially are those nights made long and weary which
_precede_ any long continuance of wet weather. A moist condition
of the atmosphere still serves the double purpose of setting in play
the nervous sensibilities, and, as a concomitant or a consequence, of
greatly disturbing, if not destroying sleep.
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.
I close this brief reference to the remoter consequences of the habits
of the opium-eater by calling the attention of the reader to the
physical weakness with consequent inaptitude for continuous exertion
which forms a part of my own experience. Unable as I am to refer it to
any _immediate_ cause, frequent and sudden prostration of
strength occurs, accompanied by slight dizziness, impaired sight, and
a sense of overwhelming weakness, though never going to the extent of
absolute faintness. Its recurrence seems to be governed by no rule. It
sometimes comes with great frequency, and sometimes weeks will elapse
without a return. Neither the state of the weather, nor any particular
condition of the body, appears to call it out. It sometimes is
relieved by a glass of water, by the entrance of a stranger, by the
very slightest excitement, and it sometimes resists the strongest
stimulants and every other attempt to combat it. I can record nothing
else respecting this visitant except that its presence is always
accompanied with a singular sensation in the stomach, and that the
entire nervous system is affected by its attack.
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.
One effect of opium upon the _mind_ deserves to be mentioned; its
influence upon the faculty of memory. The logical memory, De Quincey
says, seems in no way to be weakened by its use, but rather the
contrary. His own devotion to the abstract principles of political
economy; the character of Coleridge's literary labors between the
years 1804-16, when his use of opium was most inordinate; together
with the cast of mind of many other well-known opium-eaters, confirms
this suggestion of De Quincey. His further statement that the memory
of dates, isolated events, and particular facts, is greatly weakened
by opium, is confirmed by my own experience. However physiologists may
explain this fact, a knowledge of it may not be without its use to
those who desire to be made thoroughly acquainted with all the
consequences of the opium habit.
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.