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.
Saturday, Nov. 25....80 grains, = 2000 drops of laudanum.
Sunday, " 26....60 " 1500 " "
Monday, " 27....50 " 1250 " "
Tuesday, " 28....40 " 1000 " "
Wednesday, " 29....30 " 750 " "
Thursday, " 30....25 " 625 " "
Friday, Dec. 1....20 " 500 " "
--- -----
Average of 1st week....44 " 1089 " "
Saturday, Dec. 2.....19 grains, = 475 drops of laudanum.
Sunday, " 3.....18 " 450 " "
Monday, " 4.....17 " 425 " "
Tuesday, " 5.....16 " 400 " "
Wednesday, " 6.....15 " 375 " "
Thursday, " 7.....15 " 375 " "
Friday, " 8.....15 " 375 " "
---- ----
Average of 2d week.....16.43" 411 " "
Saturday, Dec. 9.....14 grains, = 350 drops of laudanum.
Sunday, " 10.....13 " 325 " "
Monday, " 11.....13 " 325 " "
Tuesday, " 12.....12 " 300 " "
Wednesday, " 13.....12 " 300 " "
Thursday, " 14.....11 " 275 " "
Friday, " 15.....10 " 250 " "
---- ----
Average of 3d week.....12.14" 304 " "
Saturday, Dec.16..... 9 grains, = 225 drops of laudanum.
Sunday, " 17..... 8 " 200 " "
Monday, " 18..... 8 " 200 " "
Tuesday, " 19..... 7 " 175 " "
Wednesday, " 20..... 6 " 150 " "
Thursday, " 21..... 5 " 125 " "
Friday, " 22..... 4 " 100 " "
---- ----
Average of 4th week.....6.71" 168 " "
Saturday, Dec.23..... 3 grains, = 75 drops of laudanum.
Sunday, " 24..... 3 " 75 " "
Monday, " 25..... 2 " 50 " "
Tuesday, " 26..... 2 " 50 " "
Wednesday, " 27..... 2 " 50 " "
Thursday, " 28..... 2 " 50 " "
Friday, " 29..... 1 " 25 " "
---- ----
Average of 5th week.....2.14" 54 " "
Saturday, Dec.30..... 1 grain, = 25 drops of laudanum.
Sunday, " 31..... 1 " 25 " "
Monday, Jan. 1..... 1 " 25 " "
Tuesday, " 2.....1/2 " 12 " "
Wednesday, " 3.....1/4 " 6 " "
---- ----
Average of 6th week....0.75 " 18 " "
The fourth and fifth weeks I found to be immeasurably the most
difficult to manage. By the sixth week the system had become somewhat
accustomed to the denial of the long-used stimulant. At any rate,
though no abatement of the previous wretchedness was apparent, it
certainly seemed less difficult to endure it. It is at this stage of
the process that I regard the advice and encouragement of a physician
as most important. He may not indeed be able to do much in direct
alleviation of the pain incident to the abandonment of opium, for I
suspect that little reliance can be placed upon the medicines
ordinarily recommended. The system has become accustomed to the
stimulant to an exorbitant degree; the suffering is consequent upon
the effort to accustom the system to get on without it. Other kinds of
stimulants, like spirits or wine, will afford a slight relief for a
few days, especially if taken in sufficiently large quantities to
induce sleep. It is the sedative qualities of the opium that are
chiefly missed, for as to excitement the patient has quite as much of
it as he can bear. For this reason malt liquors are preferable to
distilled spirits--they stupefy more than they excite. But to malt
liquors this serious objection exists, they tend powerfully to
aggravate all disorders of the liver. This tendency the reforming
opium-eater can not afford to overlook, for no one effect of the
experiment is more distressing than the marvellous and unhealthy
activity given to this organ by the process through which he is
passing. The testimony of all opium-eaters on this point is
uniform. For months and even years this organ in those who have
relinquished the drug remains disordered. When in its worst state, the
use of something bitter, the more bitter the better, is exceedingly
grateful. The difficulty lies in finding any thing that has a properly
bitter taste. Aloes, nux vomica, colocynth, quassia, have a flavor
that is much more sweet than bitter. These serious annoyances from the
condition of the liver, as well as those arising from the state of the
stomach and some of the other organs, may be somewhat mitigated by the
skill of an intelligent medical man, who, even if he happens to know
little about the habit of opium-eating, should know much as to the
proper regimen to be observed in cases where these organs are
disordered.
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.
* * * * *
I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable
period of my life. According to my application of it, I trust that it
will prove not merely an interesting record, but in a considerable
degree useful and instructive. In _that_ hope it is that I have
drawn it up, and _that_ must be my apology for breaking through
that delicate and honorable reserve which for the most part restrains
us from the public exposure of our own errors and infirmities.
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.'
It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us all that it
should be so; nor would I willingly, in my own person, manifest a
disregard of such salutary feelings, nor in act or word do any thing
to weaken them. But on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not
amount to a confession of guilt, so on the other, it is possible that,
if it did, the benefit resulting to others from the record of an
experience purchased at so heavy a price might compensate, by a vast
over-balance, for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed,
and justify a breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not,
of necessity, imply guilt. They approach or recede from the shades of
that dark alliance in proportion to the probable motives and prospects
of the offender, and the palliations, known or secret, of the offense;
in proportion as the temptations to it were potent from the first, and
the resistance to it, in act or in effort, was earnest to the
last. For my own part, without breach of truth or modesty, I may
affirm that my life has been on the whole the life of a philosopher;
from my birth I was made an intellectual creature; and intellectual in
the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, even from my
school-boy days. If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I am
bound to confess that I have indulged in it to an excess not yet
_recorded_ [Footnote: "Not yet _recorded_," I say; for there
is one celebrated man of the present day [Coleridge] who, if all be
true which is reported of him, has greatly exceeded me in quantity.]
of any other man, it is no less true that I have struggled against
this fascinating enthrallment with a religious zeal, and have at
length accomplished what I never yet heard attributed to any other
man--have untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain
which fettered me. Such a self-conquest may reasonably be set off in
counterbalance to any kind or degree of self-indulgence. Not to insist
that, in my case, the self-conquest was unquestionable, the
self-indulgence open to doubts of casuistry, according as that name
shall be extended to acts aiming at the bare relief of pain, or shall
be restricted to such as aim at the excitement of positive pleasure.
Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge; and, if I did, it is possible
that I might still resolve on the present act of confession, in
consideration of the service which I may thereby render to the whole
class of opium-eaters. But who are they? Reader, I am sorry to say, a
very numerous class indeed. Of this I became convinced some years ago,
by computing at that time the number of those in one small class of
English society (the class of men distinguished for talent, or of
eminent station) who were known to me, directly or indirectly, as
opium-eaters; such, for instance, as the eloquent and benevolent
-----, the late Dean of -----; Lord -----; Mr. -----, the philosopher;
a late under-secretary of state (who described to me the sensation
which first drove him to the use of opium in the very same words of
the Dean of -----, viz., "that he felt as though rats were gnawing and
abrading the coats of his stomach"); Mr. -----; and many others,
hardly less known, whom it would be tedious to mention. Now if one
class, comparatively so limited, could furnish so many scores of cases
(and that within the knowledge of one single inquirer), it was a
natural inference that the entire population of England would furnish
a proportionable number. The soundness of this inference, however, I
doubted, until some facts became known to me which satisfied me that
it was not incorrect. I will mention two: 1. Three respectable London
druggists, in widely remote quarters of London, from whom I happened
lately to be purchasing small quantities of opium, assured me that the
number of _amateur_ opium-eaters (as I may term them) was at
this time immense; and that the difficulty of distinguishing these
persons, to whom habit had rendered opium necessary, from such as were
purchasing it with a view to suicide, occasioned them daily trouble
and disputes. This evidence respected London only. But, 2, (which
will possibly surprise the reader more,) some years ago, on passing
through Manchester, I was informed by several cotton manufacturers
that their work-people were rapidly getting into the practice of
opium-eating; so much so that on a Saturday afternoon the counters of
the druggists were strewed with pills of one, two, or three grains, in
preparation for the known demand of the evening. The immediate
occasion of this practice was the lowness of wages, which at that time
would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits, and wages rising,
it may be thought that this practice would cease; but as I do not
readily believe that any man, having once tasted the divine luxuries
of opium, will afterward descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of
alcohol, I take it for granted
"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 (that is, from eighteen
to twenty-four) 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.
It is so long since I first took opium, that if it had been a trifling
incident in my life I might have forgotten its date; but cardinal
events are not to be forgotten; and, from circumstances connected with
it, I remember that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. During
that season I was in London, having come thither for the first time
since my entrance at college. And my introduction to opium arose in
the following way: From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my
head in cold water at least once a day. Being suddenly seized with
toothache, I attributed it to some relaxation caused by an accidental
intermission of that practice; jumped out of bed, plunged my head into
a basin of cold water, and with hair thus wetted went to sleep. The
next morning, as I need hardly say, I awoke with excruciating
rheumatic pains of the head and face, from which I had hardly any
respite for about twenty days. On the twenty-first day I think it
was, and on a Sunday, that I went out into the streets; rather to run
away, if possible, from my torments than with any distinct purpose. By
accident I met a college acquaintance, who recommended opium. Opium!
dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain! I had heard of it as I
had heard of manna or of ambrosia, but no further. How unmeaning a
sound it was at that time! what solemn chords does it now strike upon
my heart! what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy
remembrances! It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a
duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy
Sunday in London. My road homeward lay through Oxford Street, and near
the "Pantheon" I saw a druggist's shop. The druggist (unconscious
minister of celestial pleasures!), as if in sympathy with the rainy
Sunday, looked dull and stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be
expected to look on a Sunday, and when I asked for the tincture of
opium he gave it to me as any other man might do; and furthermore, out
of my shilling returned to me what seemed to be a real copper
half-penny, taken out of a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless, in spite
of such indications of humanity, he has ever since existed in my mind
as a beatific vision of an immortal druggist sent down to earth on a
special mission to myself.
Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a moment in
taking the quantity prescribed. I was necessarily ignorant of the
whole art and mystery of opium-taking, and what I took, I took under
every disadvantage. But I took it; and in an hour--O heavens! what a
revulsion! what an upheaving from its lowest depths of the inner
spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had
vanished was now a trifle in my eyes--this negative effect was
swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had
opened before me in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly
revealed. Here was a panacea, a _phaomakon nepenfes_, for all
human woes; here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers
had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered. Happiness might now
be bought for a penny and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable
ecstacies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle; and peace of mind
could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach. But if I talk in this
way the reader will think I am laughing, and I can assure him that
nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium. Its pleasures even
are of a grave and solemn complexion, and in his happiest state the
opium-eater can not present himself in the character of
_L'Allegro_; even then he speaks and thinks as becomes _Il
Penseroso_.