Allen's office in Worcester, Mass., and continuing there until March,
1842, was formally admitted to the Bar and commissioned as Justice of
the Peace for Essex County. My life in Worcester was pretty regular,
though I was not perfectly abstinent, nor did I escape being once or
twice overcome. In March, 1842, I went to Lynn, Mass., as editor of
the _Essex County Washingtonian_. Here was the spot where,
technically speaking, I had first entered life, and it was teeming
with a thousand memories, now most painful and sad. Much as I had
known before of mental suffering, I can remember none more intense
than I experienced the first few months of my return to Lynn. At times
I felt as if any thing were preferable to what I endured, and that to
procure relief by any means whatever was perfectly justifiable, on the
ground of that necessity which is above all laws. I therefore used
morphine, first occasionally and at last habitually, and sometimes,
though rarely, brandy. Some six months after settling in Lynn, being
one day in Boston on, business, I was oppressed with deadly nausea,
for which after trying two or three glasses of plain soda-water as a
remedy, I tried a glass of brandy with the soda. I was made
intoxicated by the means and badly so. I was perplexed as to what I
ought to do under the circumstances, but by the advice of two
Washingtonians, one of them the general agent of my paper, I still
continued at my post of editor.
In the following winter I was up as one of three candidates for
Congress from Essex County. In addition to the usual butting a
candidate gets on such occasions--being the third, whose votes
prevented a choice of either the other two candidates--I was exposed
to a raking fire from the two great political parties. Out of old
truths twisted and exaggerated out of all identity, and new lies
coined for the occasion, a world of falsity as to my character and
habits was bandied about; and although a caucus sitting in examination
two long successive evenings pronounced the charges against me
slanderous and wicked, and published a hand-bill to that effect, yet
the proprietor of my paper, moved by a power behind the throne, chose
that my connection with the paper should terminate. For some time
previous, I had been getting interested in the Association doctrines
of Fourier. I now became one of the editors of a monthly magazine
devoted in part to the advocacy of these doctrines, which after
issuing three numbers was compelled to stop for want of support. I
then in September, 1843, went forth on a tour through Massachusetts to
lecture on the subject. I thus spent five months, visiting twenty
towns and delivering some ninety gratuitous lectures. During this time
I used morphine habitually, and occasionally, though rarely, took
brandy. I took enough, however, of the latter to partly intoxicate me
three or four times, and sufficiently often to prevent the reputation
of being intemperate from ever dying away.
Sick and tired out with an existence so false and wretched, I
determined again to achieve emancipation at whatever cost, and by the
help of Providence, and the kind co-operation of inestimable friends,
I succeeded. I suffered severely, but far less than might have been
supposed. Cold water, under God, was the great instrument of my
cure. Drinking copiously of it, and lying some hours per day swathed
in a sheet dipped in it, for about one month, I found the painful
symptoms mostly gone; and three or four months of rest completed the
restoration of my strength.
And thus, after years of pain and sufferings in every kind, and errors
many and great, I find myself, by God's blessing, free and healthy,
and with a youthful life and feeling of which the very memory was
almost extinct.
Within a few months from the time this autobiography closes, the
writer again relapsed into the use of opium, and was received as a
patient into the New York Hospital. While there he furnished the
editor of the _Medical Times_, then on duty at the Hospital, with
a brief history of his case, substantially agreeing with what has
already been given. A portion of the paper is occupied with a
comparison of the effects of opium and alcohol on the system, and is
valuable as being the experience of one who was eminently familiar
with both:
The difference between opium and alcohol in their effects on body and
mind, is (judging from my own experience) very great. Alcohol, pushed
to a certain extent, overthrows the balance of the faculties, and
brings out some one or more into undue prominence and activity; and
(sad indeed) these are most commonly our inferior and perhaps lowest
faculties. A man who, sober, is a demi-god, is, when drunk, below
even a beast. With opium (_me judice_) it is the reverse. Opium
takes a man's mind where it finds it, and lifts it _en masse_ on
to a far higher platform of existence, the faculties all retaining
their former relative positions--that is, taking the mind as it is, it
intensifies and exalts all its capacities of thought and
susceptibilities of emotion. Not even this, however, extravagant as it
may sound, conveys the whole truth. Opium weakens or utterly paralyzes
the lower propensities, while it invigorates and elevates the superior
faculties, both intellectual and affectional. The opium-eater is
without sexual appetite; anger, envy, malice, and the entire
hell-brood claiming kin to these, seem dead within him, or at least
asleep; while gentleness, kindness, benevolence, together with a sort
of sentimental religionism, constitute his habitual frame of mind. If
a man has a poetical gift, opium almost irresistibly stirs it into
utterance. If his vocation be to write, it matters not how profound,
how difficult, how knotty the theme to be handled, opium imparts a
before unknown power of dealing with such a theme; and after
completing his task a man reads his own composition with utter
amazement at its depth, its grasp, its beauty, and force of
expression, and wonders whence came the thoughts that stand on the
page before him. If called to speak in public, opium gives him a
copiousness of thought, a fluency of utterance, a fruitfulness of
illustration, and a penetrating, thrilling eloquence, which often
astounds and overmasters himself, not less than it kindles, melts, and
sways the audience he addresses. I might dilate largely on this topic,
but space and strength are alike lacking.
Taking up his personal story where his "Autobiography" leaves it, and
where, as he imagined, hydropathic treatment had effected a cure, the
writer explains how he became for the third time an opium-eater:
The time came at last when I must work, be the consequences what they
would, and work, too, with my brain, my only implement; and that time
found my brain impotent from a yet uninvigorated nervous system. If I
would work, I must stimulate; and morphine, bad as it was, was better
than alcohol. I took morphine once more, and lectured on literary
topics for some months with triumphant success. While so lecturing in
a country town, I was solicited to take a parish in the
neighborhood. I did so, and there continued two years and a quarter,
performing in that time as much literary labor as ever in three times
the interval in any prior period of my life. In short, I had three
happy, intellectually-vigorous, outpouring years, with bodily health
uniformly sound and complete with the exceptions hereafter to be
mentioned. And yet, through those years I never used less than a
quarter of an ounce of morphine per week, and sometimes more. I
attribute my retaining so much health, in spite of the morphine, to
the rigorous salubrity of my habits, bodily and mental, in other
respects. Once, and often twice a day, the year round, I laved the
whole person in cold water with soap; I slept with open window the
year through excepting stormy winter nights; I laid upon a hard bed,
guiltless of feathers; I used a simple diet; and finally, I cherished
all gentle and kindly, while rigidly excluding from my mind all bitter
and perturbing, feelings. But not to dilate further on mere narrative,
let me say that I have continued to use opium, for the most part
habitually, from my last assumption of it up to the period of my
admission into this Hospital. A year since, however, I dropped
morphine, and have since used the opium pill in its stead, sometimes
taking an ounce per week, but generally not overpassing a half ounce
per week. And here I may make the general remark, proved true from my
own experience, that for all the desirable effects opium is about the
same as an ounce or any larger quantity of said gum, and nearly the
same as a quarter-ounce of morphine or more--that is, half an ounce of
opium stimulates and braces me at least nearly if not entirely as much
as I can be stimulated and braced by this drug. All that is taken over
this tends rather to clog, to stupefy, to nauseate, than to stimulate.
Another point in my own experience is, that in a few weeks only, after
commencing or recommencing the use of opium, I always reached the full
amount which, as a habit, I ever used--that is, either a half-ounce of
opium or a quarter-ounce of morphine. I never went on increasing the
dose in order to get the required amount of stimulation, but at one or
the other of these two points I would remain for years successively. A
third remark I would make is, that it is only for the first few weeks
after commencing the use of opium that one feels palpably and
distinctly the thrilling of the nerves, the sensation of being
stimulated and raised above the previously existing physical tone, for
which the drug was first taken. All the effects produced after that by
the opium, are to keep the body at that level of sensation in which
one feels positively alive and capable to act, without being impeded
or weighed down by physical languor and impotence. Such languor and
impotence one feels from abstaining merely a few hours beyond the
wonted time of taking the dose. It is not pleasure, then, that drives
onward the confirmed opium-eater, but a necessity scarce less
resistible than that Fate to which the pagan mythology subjected gods
not less than men.
Let me now, before closing, attempt briefly to describe the effects of
opium upon the body and mind of the user, as also the principal
sensations accompanying the breaking of the habit.
The opium-eater is prevailingly disinclined to, and in some sort
incapacitated for, bodily exertion or locomotion. A considerable part
of the time he feels something like a sense, not very distinctly
defined, of bodily fatigue; and to sit continuously in a rocking or an
easy chair, or to recline on a sofa or bed, is his preference above
all modes of disposing of himself. To walk up a flight of stairs often
palpably tires the legs, and makes him pant almost as much as a well
person does after pretty rapid motion. His lungs manifestly are
somehow obstructed, and do not play with perfect freedom. His liver
too is torpid, or else but partially active; for if using laudanum or
the opium pill, he is constantly more or less costive, the faeces
being hard and painful to expel; and if using morphone, though he may
have a daily movement, yet the faeces are dry and harder than in
health. One other morbid physical symptom I remember to have
experienced for a considerable time while using a quarter of an ounce
of morphine per week, and this was an annoying palpitation of the
heart. I was once told, too, by a keen observer, who knew my habit,
that my color was apt to change frequently from red to pale.
These are substantially all the physical peculiarities I experienced
during my opium-using years. It is still true, however, that the years
of my using opium (or, in perfect strictness, morphine) were as
healthy as any, if not the very healthiest, of the years of my life.
But what of the effects of opium-eating on the mind? The one great
injury it works, is (I think) to the will, that force whereby a man
executes the work he was sent here to do, and breasts and overcomes
the obstacles and difficulties he is appointed to encounter, and bears
himself unflinchingly amid the tempests of calamity and sorrow which
pertain to the mortal lot. Hardihood, manliness, resolution,
enterprise, ambition, whatever the original degree of these qualities,
become grievously debilitated if not wholly extinct. Reverie, the
perusal of poetry and fiction, becomes the darling occupation, of the
opium-user, and he hates every call that summons him from it. Give him
an intellectual task to accomplish; place him in a position where a
mental, effort is to be made; and, most probably, he will acquit him
with unusual brilliancy and power, supposing his native ability to be
good. But he can not or will not seek and find for himself such work
and such position. He feels helpless, and incompetent to stir about
and hold himself upright amid the jostling, competitive throngs that
crowd the world's paths, and there seek life's prizes by performing
life's duties and executing its requisitions. Solitude, with his
books, his dreams and imaginings, and the excited sensibilities that
lead to no external action, constitute his chosen world and favorite
life. In one word, he is a species of maniac; since, I believe, his
views, his feelings, and his desires in relation to most things are
peculiar, eccentric, and unlike those of other men, or of himself in a
state of soundness. There is, however, as complete a "method in his
madness" as in the sanity of other men. He is in a different sphere
from other men, and in that sphere he is sane.
The first symptoms attendant on breaking off the habit, coming on some
hours after omitting the wonted dose, are a constant propensity to
yawn, gape, and stretch, together with somewhat of languor, and a
general uneasiness. Time passes, and there follows a sensation as if
the stomach was drawn together or compressed, as if with a slight
degree of cramp, coupled with a total extinction of appetite; the
mouth and throat become dry and irritated; there is an incessant
disposition to clear the throat by "hemming" and swallowing, and there
is a tickling in the nose which necessitates frequent sneezing,
sometimes a dozen or even twenty times in succession. As the hours go
on, shudders run through the frame, with alternate fever heats and icy
chills, hot sweats and cold clammy sweats, while a dull, incessant
ache pervades the bones, especially at the joints, alternated by an
occasional sharp, intolerable pang, like tic-douloureux. Then follow a
host of indescribable sensations, as of burning, tinglings, and
twitchings, seeming to run along just beneath the surface of the skin
over the whole body, and so strange are these sensations that one is
prompted to scream, and strike the wall, the bed, or himself, to vary
them. By this time the liver commences a most energetic action, and a
violent diarrhea sets in. The discharges are not watery or mucous,
but, save in thinness, not very unlike healthy stools for the most
part. Not long, however, after the commencement of the diarrhea, so
copious is the effusion of bile from the liver, that one will
sometimes pass, for a dozen stools in succession, what seems to be
merely a blackish bile, without a particle of fæces mingled with
it. But this lasts not many days, and is followed by the thin, not
altogether unhealthy-looking discharges above mentioned, repeated
often an incredible number of times per day. Whether from the quality
of these discharges, or from whatever cause, the interior surface of
the bowels feels intolerably hot, as though excoriated, and it seems
as if boiling water or aqua fortis running through the intestines
would scarce torture one more than these stools. In fact, all the
internal surfaces of the body are in this same burning, raw-feeling
state. The brain, too, is in a highly excited, irritable condition;
the head sometimes aching and throbbing, as though it must burst into
fragments, and a humming, washing, simmering noise going on
incessantly for days together. Of course there can be no sleep, and
one will go on for ten days and nights consecutively without one
moment's loss of intensest consciousness, so far as he can judge!
Strange to say, notwithstanding this excessive irritation of the
entire system, one feels so feeble and strengthless that he can scarce
drag one foot after the other, and to walk a few rods, or up a flight
of stairs, is so terribly fatiguing that one must needs sit down and
pant. (Let it be noted, that these symptoms belong to the case where
one is simply deprived at once and wholly of opium without any medical
help, unless the use of cold water be considered such.) These symptoms
(unaided by medicine) last, with gradual abatements of virulence, from
twenty to thirty days, and then mostly die away. Not well and right,
however, does one feel, even then. Though for the most part free from
pain, he is yet physically weak, and all corporeal exertion is a
distressing effort. He must needs sleep, too, enormously, going to bed
often at sunset in a July day, and sleeping log-like until six or
seven next morning, and then sleeping with like soundness two or three
hours after dinner. How long it would be before the recovery of his
complete original strength and natural physical tone, personal
experience does not enable me to say. His condition, both in itself
and as relates to others, is meanwhile most strange and anomalous. He
looks, probably, better than ever in his life before. In sufficiently
full flesh, with ruddy cheeks and skin clear as a healthy child's, the
beholder would pronounce him in the height of health and vigor, and
would glow with indignation at seeing him loitering about day after
day, doing little save sleep, in a world where so much work needs to
be done. And yet he feels all but impotent for enterprise, or any
active physical efforts; for there is scarce enough nervous force in
him to move his frame to a lingering walk, and sometimes it seems as
if the nervous fibres were actually pulled out, and he must move, if
at all, by pure force of volition.
Most singular too, the while, is the state of his mind. His power of
thought is keen, bright, and fertile beyond example, and his
imagination swarms with pictures of beauty, while his sensitiveness to
impressions and emotions of every kind is so excessively keen that the
tears spring to his eyes on the slightest occasion. He is a child in
sensibility, while a youth in the vividness, and a man in the grasp,
the piercingness and the copiousness of his thoughts. He can not write
down his thoughts, for his arm and hand are unnerved; but in
conversation or before an audience he can utter himself as if filled
with the breath of inspiration itself.
INSANITY AND SUICIDE FROM AN ATTEMPT TO ABANDON MORPHINE.
The account which follows is abridged from advance proof-sheets of a
narrative, written for separate publication, by Dr. L. Barnes, of
Delaware, Ohio, by whose courtesy a portion of his article appears in
these pages.
In the afternoon of Saturday, January 25th, 1868, Rev. G. W. Brush,
of Delaware, a clergyman of estimable character and more than
respectable talents, was found to have committed suicide. Sixteen or
seventeen years previous to this fatal act, morphine had been
prescribed to Mr. Brush for occasional disorder in the bowels and for
a dormant cancer of the tongue. But something else which had not been
prescribed--an unrelenting necessity to go on as he had begun--was
also developed in his nature, which in time bore its matured and
inevitable fruit. Mr. Brush made his case known for the first time to
Dr. Barnes in November, 1866, when his habitual consumption of
morphine varied from twelve to fifteen grains daily, with an
occasional use of double this quantity.
At this time, in the language of Dr. Barnes, he appeared greatly
depressed, mourned over his life as a failure, and said he had been
tempted to end it. He had once made a serious effort to abandon the
habit, but the effect was so prostrating, and diarrhea, pouring like a
flood, had borne him so near the gates of death, that he was compelled
to resume the drug in order to save his life. But he was determined to
make another attempt, and wished my professional services against the
consequences which he well knew must follow.
He entered upon the trial, reducing rapidly the amount of his
morphine. I called on him in the course of two or three days,
according to appointment, and found him wan and haggard, weak and
almost wild with suffering. His hands, lips, and voice trembled. He
tottered on his legs; and, though sweating profusely, he hovered about
the fire to keep warm. Day followed day, while he still suffered and
endured. On one occasion, as I entered, he had been writing, and read
me his production. It was an account of the effects produced by
morphine, the giving way of nerves, softening of the muscles, the
depression, nightmare in the day-time, visions, horrid shapes; how the
victim is sometimes engulfed in a flood of waters, while faces in all
imaginary varieties of distortion, grin from the waves, and terrible
eyes gleam forth from their depths.
About this time, business which he thought could not be transacted in
his suffering condition unexpectedly demanded his attention, and the
attempt was abandoned.
The year 1867 passed with him amid depression, shame, and remorse. He
called on me perhaps a hundred times at my office, and seldom left
without referring in some way to what he considered his
degradation. He repeatedly inquired if I thought it of any use for him
to try going on any longer in his ministerial work. Once he came with
a brighter face than usual, saying he had concluded to try it one year
more, and if he could not succeed----. Then what? I inquired as he
paused. A dark cloud spreading over his brow was his only answer, and
he lapsed into despondency. This despondency appears to be the
legitimate effect of opium. This fact was strikingly manifest in the
case of Mr. Brush, for his natural disposition, from childhood up, had
been usually kind, cheerful, and good; nor had he any dyspeptic or
bilious tendencies to worry and sour him. Few men have ever been
physically so well organized, or socially and religiously so well
situated for the enjoyment of a prosperous and happy life.
He came to me, finally, on the first day of January, 1868, saying his
people had kindly granted him leave of absence for a few weeks, which
he would devote to the work of overcoming his enemy, if such a thing
were possible. He could not live in his bondage. His wretched life,
with its terrible end, was forever staring him in the face. He asked
me if I would receive him at my house, and take care of him during the
struggle, as I had once consented to do. I said I would if he would
consent to let the people know why he was there. He looked very sad
as he answered that it would not do. He must undertake the battle at
home. He then took from his pocket some papers of morphine, which he
had caused to be weighed in doses diminishing at the rate of half a
grain each, beginning with six grains for the first day, five and a
half for the next, and so on, down. This was a sudden falling off of
nearly two-thirds from his ordinary allowance. He gave me all but the
two largest powders, which he reserved for an absence of two days at
Columbus. He proposed going away for the purpose of coming home sick,
in which condition he well knew he should be at that time. I was to
call at his house on the evening of his return, to render such
assistance as his condition might demand.
I went at the time appointed and found him again shattered, trembling,
sweating, and hovering about the fire. He said he had slept none, was
suffering much, and that his knees especially were aching badly. He
called pleadingly for the amount of morphine prepared for that day, as
he had not taken it. It was given, and then he conversed freely for an
hour or so.
The next evening he proposed to reduce his morphine by two grains
instead of half a grain, but was in a hurry for the quantity he was to
have. In the course of over two days more he came down to about two
grains for the whole day. But one evening, when I found him
apparently much relieved from suffering, and he saw my look of wonder
and doubt, he confessed having broken over the rules by taking an
additional dose of about three grains on his own responsibility. He
said his diarrhea had returned, the medicine left to check it was
gone, he hated to send for me, and so had done it. He was full of
remorse, declaring that if I should now abandon him, he would not
blame me. I told him I should stick to him as long as he would let me;
that he was doing a great work, such as few men ever succeeded in--a
work for two worlds, this one and the next--and that he must not give
it up.