that has been hitherto written on the subject of opium, whether by
travellers in Turkey (who may plead their privilege of lying as an old
immemorial right) or by professors of medicine, writing _ex
cathedra_, I have but one emphatic criticism to pronounce--Lies!
lies! lies! I do by no means deny that some truths have been delivered
to the world in regard to opium: thus it has been repeatedly affirmed
by the learned that opium is a dusky brown in color, and this, take
notice, I grant; secondly, that it is rather dear, which also I
grant--for in my time East India opium has been three guineas a pound,
and Turkey eight; and thirdly, that if you eat a good deal of it, most
probably you must do what is particularly disagreeable to any man of
regular habits, viz., die. These weighty propositions are, all and
singular, true; I can not gainsay them; and truth ever was and will be
commendable. But in these three theorems I believe we have exhausted
the stock of knowledge as yet accumulated by man on the subject of
opium. And therefore, worthy doctors, as there seems to be room for
further discoveries, stand aside and allow me to come forward and
lecture on this matter.
First, then, it is not so much affirmed as taken for granted by all
who ever mention opium, formally or incidentally, that it does or can
produce intoxication. Now, reader, assure yourself, _meo periculo_,
that no quantity of opium ever did or could intoxicate. As to the
tincture of opium, commonly called laudanum, _that_ might certainly
intoxicate if a man could bear to take enough of it; but why? because
it contains so much proof spirit, and not because it contains so much
opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of
producing any state of body at all resembling that which is produced
by alcohol; and not in _degree_ only incapable, but even in _kind_; it
is not in the quantity of its effects merely, but in the quality, that
it differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine is always mounting
and tending to a crisis, after which it declines; that from opium,
when once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours; the first,
to borrow a technical distinction from medicine, is a case of acute,
the second of chronic, pleasure; the one is a flame, the other a
steady and equable glow. But the main distinction lies in this, that
whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary
(if taken in a proper manner), introduces among them the most
exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his
self-possesion; opium greatly invigorates it. Wine unsettles and
clouds the judgment, and gives a preternatural brightness and a vivid
exaltation to the contempts and the admirations, to the loves and the
hatreds, of the drinker; opium, on the contrary, communicates serenity
and equipoise to all the faculties, active or passive; and, with
respect to the temper and moral feelings in general, it gives simply
that sort of vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and which
would probably always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or
antediluvian health. Thus, for instance, opium, like wine, gives an
expansion to the heart and the benevolent affections; but then with
this remarkable difference, that in the sudden development of
kind-heartedness which accompanies inebriation there is always more or
less of a maudlin character which exposes it to the contempt of the
by-stander. Men shake hands, swear eternal friendship, and shed
tears--no mortal knows why--and the sensual creature is clearly
uppermost. But the expansion of the benigner feelings, incident to
opium, is no febrile access, but a healthy restoration to that state
which the mind would naturally recover upon the removal of any
deep-seated irritation of pain that had disturbed and quarrelled with
the impulse of a heart originally just and good. Wine constantly leads
a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance, and beyond a certain
point it is sure to volatilize and to dispence the intellectual
energies; whereas opium always seens to compose what had been
agitated, and to concentrate what had been distracted. In short, to
sum up all in one word, a man who is, inebriated, or tending to
inebriation, is, and feels that he is in a condition which calls up
into supremacy the merely human, too often the brutal, part of his
nature; but the opium-eater (I speak of him who is not suffering from
any disease, or other remote effects of opium) feels that the diviner
part of his nature is paramount; that is, the moral affections are in
a state of cloudless serenity; and over all is the great light of the
majestic intellect.
This is the doctrine of the true Church on the subject of opium: of
which Church I acknowledge myself to be the only member--the alpha and
omega; but then it is to be recollected that I speak from the ground
of a large and profound personal experience, whereas most of the
unscientific authors who have at all treated of opium, and even of
those who have written expressly on the _materia medica_, make it
evident from the horror they express of it that their experimental
knowledge of its action is none at all. I will, however, candidly
acknowledge that I have met with one person who bore evidence to its
intoxicating power such as staggered my own incredulity; for he was a
surgeon, and had himself taken opium largely. I happened to say to
him, that his enemies (as I had heard) charged him with talking
nonsense on politics, and that his friends apologized for him by
suggesting that he was constantly in a state of intoxication from
opium. Now the accusation, said I, is not _prima facie_, and of
necessity an absurd one; but the defense _is_. To my surprise,
however, he insisted that both his enemies and his friends were in the
right. "I will maintain," said he, "that I _do_ talk nonsense;
and secondly, I will maintain that I do not talk nonsense upon
principle, or with any view to profit, but solely and simply," said
he, "solely and simply--solely and simply," repeating it three times
over, "because I am drunk with opium; and that daily." I confess, that
the authority of a surgeon, and one who was reputed a good one, may
seem a weighty one to my prejudice; but still I must plead my
experience, which was greater than his greatest by seven thousand
drops a day; and though it was not possible to suppose a medical man
unacquainted with the characteristic symptoms of vinous intoxication,
yet it struck me that he might proceed on a logical error of using the
word intoxication with too great latitude, and extending it
generically to all modes of nervous excitement, instead of restricting
it as the expression for a specific sort of excitement connected with
certain diagnostics. Some people have maintained, in my hearing, that
they had been drunk upon green tea; and a medical student in London,
for whose knowledge in his profession I have reason to feel great
respect, assured me the other day that a patient in recovering from an
illness had got drunk on a beefsteak.
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 (if we were
to credit the numerous pictures of Turkish opium-eaters) 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 (to speak
medically) 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.
Courteous, and I hope indulgent reader, having accompanied me thus
far, now let me request you to move onward for about eight years; that
is to say, from 1804 (when I said that my acquaintance with opium
first began) to 1812. And what am I doing? Taking opium. Yes, but
what else? Why, reader, in 1812, the year we are now arrived at, as
well as for some years previous, I have been chiefly studying German
metaphysics, in the writings of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, etc. And I
still take opium? On Saturday nights. And, perhaps, have taken it
unblushingly ever since "the rainy Sunday," and "the Pantheon," and
"the beatific druggist" of 1804? Even so. And how do I find my health
after all this opium-eating? in short, how do I do? Why, pretty well,
I thank you, reader; in the phrase of ladies in the straw, "as well as
can be expected." In fact, if I dared to say the real and simple truth
(it must not be forgotten that hitherto I thought, to satisfy the
theories of medical men, I ought to be ill), I was never better in my
life than in the spring of 1812; and I hope sincerely that the
quantity of claret, port, or "particular Madeira," which in all
probability you, good reader, have taken and design to take for every
term of eight years during your natural life, may as little disorder
your health as mine was disordered by opium I had taken for the eight
years between 1804 and 1812. To this moderation and temperate use of
the article I may ascribe it, I suppose, that as yet at least (that
is, in 1812) I am ignorant and unsuspicious of the avenging terrors
which opium has in store for those who abuse its lenity. At the same
time I have been only a _dilettante_ eater of opium; eight years'
practice even, with the single precaution of allowing sufficient
intervals between every indulgence, has not been sufficient to make
opium necessary to me as an article of daily diet. But now comes a
different era. Move on, if you please, reader, to 1813. In the summer
of the year we have just quitted I had suffered much in bodily health
from distress of mind connected with a very melancholy event. This
event, being no ways related to the subject now before me further than
through bodily illness which it produced, I need not more particularly
notice. Whether this illness of 1812 had any share in that of 1813 I
know not; but so it was, that in the latter year I was attacked by a
most appalling irritation of the stomach, in all respects the same as
that which had caused me so much suffering in youth, and accompanied
by a revival of all the old dreams. This is the point of my narrative
on which, as respects my own self-justification, the whole of what
follows may be said to hinge. And here I find myself in a perplexing
dilemma. Either, on the one hand, I must exhaust the reader's patience
by such a detail of my malady and of my struggles with it as might
suffice to establish the fact of my inability to wrestle any longer
with irritation and constant suffering, or, on the other hand, by
passing lightly over this critical part of my story, I must forego the
benefit of a stronger impression left on the mind of the reader, and
must lay myself open to the misconstruction of having slipped by the
easy and gradual steps of self-indulging persons from the first to the
final state of opium-eating (a misconstruction to which there will be
a lurking predisposition in most readers from my previous
acknowledgments). Be not so ungenerous as to let me suffer in your
good opinion through my own forbearance and regard for your comfort.
No; believe all that I ask of you, viz., that I could resist no
longer. Whether, indeed, afterward, I might not have succeeded in
breaking off the habit, even when it seemed to me that all efforts
would be unavailing, and whether many of the innumerable efforts which
I _did_ make might not have been carried much further, and my
gradual re-conquests of ground lost might not have been followed up
much more energetically, these are questions which I must
decline. Perhaps I might make out a case of palliation; but--shall I
speak ingenuously?--I confess it, as a besetting infirmity of mine,
that I am too much of an Eudæmonist; I hanker too much after a state
of happiness, both for myself and others; I can not face misery,
whether my own or not, with an eye of sufficient firmness; and am
little capable of encountering present pain for the sake of any
reversionary benefit.
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.
This year which we have now reached, stood, I confess, as a
parenthesis between years of a gloomier character. It was a year of
brilliant water (to speak after the manner of jewellers), set, as it
were, and insulated in the gloom and cloudy melancholy of
opium. Strange as it may sound, I had a little before this time
descended suddenly, and without any considerable effort, from three
hundred and twenty grains of opium (that is, eight [Footnote: I here
reckon twenty-five drops of laudanum as equivalent to one grain of
opium, which I believe is the common estimate. However, as both may be
considered variable quantities (the crude opium varying much in
strength, and the tincture still more), I suppose that no
infinitesimal accuracy can be had in such a calculation. Tea-spoons
vary as much in size as opium in strength. Small ones hold about one
hundred drops--so that eight thousand drops are about eighty times a
tea-spoonful.] thousand drops of laudanum) per day to forty grains, or
one-eighth part. Instantaneously, and as if by magic, the cloud of
profoundest melancholy which rested upon my brain, like some black
vapors that I have seen roll away from the summits of mountains, drew
off in one day; passed off with its murky banners as simultaneously as
a ship that has been stranded and is floated off by a spring tide--
"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 (and doubtless giving me credit for a knowledge
of all the languages of the earth, besides perhaps a few of the lunar
ones), 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 (madjoon), 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 (in the school-boy
phrase) 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 [Footnote: This,
however, is not a necessary conclusion; the varieties of effect
produced by opium on different constitutions are infinite. A London
magistrate (Harriot's "Struggles through Life," vol. iii. p. 391,
third edition) has recorded that, on the first occasion of his trying
laudanum for the gout, he took FORTY drops, the next night SIXTY, and
on the fifth night EIGHTY, without any effect whatever, and this at an
advanced age. I have an anecdote from a country surgeon, however,
which sinks Mr. Harriot's case into a trifle.] 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 (partly
from the picturesque exhibition he assisted to frame, partly from the
anxiety I connected with his image for some days) fastened afterward
upon my dreams, and brought other Malays with him, worse than himself,
that ran "a-muck" [Footnote: See the common accounts, in any Eastern
traveller or voyager, of the frantic excesses committed by Malays who
have taken opium or are reduced to desperation by ill luck at
gambling.] 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.
But now farewell, a long farewell to happiness, winter or summer!
farewell to smiles and laughter! farewell to peace of mind! farewell
to hope and to tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations of
sleep! For more than three years and a half I am summoned away from
these. I am now arrived at an Iliad of woes, for I have now to record
_the pains of opium._
Reader, who have thus far accompanied me, I must request your
attention to a brief explanatory note on three points:
1. For several reasons I have not been able to compose the notes for
this part of my narrative into any regular and connected shape. I give
the notes disjointed as I find them, or have now drawn them up from
memory. Some of them point to their own date, some I have dated, and
some are undated. Whenever it could answer my purpose to transplant
them from the natural or chronological order I have not scrupled to do
so. Sometimes I speak in the present, sometimes in the past tense. Few
of the notes, perhaps, were written exactly at the period of time to
which they relate; but this can little affect their accuracy, as the
impressions were such that they can never fade from my mind. Much has
been omitted. I could not, without effort, constrain myself to the
task of either recalling or constructing into a regular narrative the
whole burden of horrors which lies upon my brain. This feeling partly
I plead in excuse, and partly that I am now in London, and am a
helpless sort of person who can not even arrange his own papers
without assistance, and I am separated from the hands which are wont
to perform for me the offices of an amanuensis.
2. You will think, perhaps, that I am too confidential and
communicative of my own private history. It may be so. But my way of
writing is rather to think aloud and follow my own humors than much to
consider who is listening to me; and if I stop to consider what is
proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt
whether any part at all is proper. The fact is, I place myself at a
distance of fifteen or twenty years ahead of this time, and suppose
myself writing to those who will be interested about me hereafter; and
wishing to have some record of a time, the entire history of which no
one can know but myself, I do it as fully as I am able with the
efforts I am now capable of making because I know not whether I can
ever find time to do it again.