THE WAR BEGINS.--STRUGGLES TO RENOUNCE OPIUM.--PHYSICAL PHENOMENA
OBSERVED IN ATTEMPTING TO LEAVE OFF THE DRUG.--DIFFICULTY IN ABJURING
THE FIEND.--I FAIL ABSOLUTELY.--SOME DIFFERENCE WITH DE QUINCEY
REGARDING THE EFFECTS OF OPIUM.--A PRELIMINARY FORESIGHT INTO THE
HORRORS OF OPIUM.
Whether to annoy the reader with the history of my repeated attempts and
failures, that is the question: for that I did attempt to throw off my
shackles, honestly and earnestly, I would have the reader fairly believe.
Yet why traverse again step by step this sad pilgrimage; the reader has
read similar experiences; then why trouble him with mine? Simply because
in the lives of all persons there is some variation, one from another; and
besides this, though I have taken some pains to read fully our opium
literature, as I may properly term it, I must say that I have found it in
a very demoralizing condition. That is, it does the reader, with reference
to opium, more harm than good--and much more. I know this from experience,
and it is one of the moving reasons why this personal history is written.
I might tire the reader's patience over and again, by recounting my
frequent attempts to throw off the accursed incubus, but shall content
myself with briefly referring to such as may benefit the public, and
especially those who are in danger from opium, but who as yet have not
passed beyond recovery. The first attempt of any real interest I made
about one year after the commencement of my unfortunate medical treatment,
which resulted in fastening the habit upon me.
In order that I might be as well advised in the undertaking as convenient,
I called upon a veteran physician, as well as opium eater, of the place
for information and counsel. One of the consequences attending previous
attempts had been diarrhoea, and a general upsetting of all the gastric
functions. I did not know why this was, or that it attended all cases
necessarily.
The physician gave me a great deal of information, which, taking it simply
as a much better knowledge of my condition, rallied and cheered my spirits
considerably. In referring to the diarrhoea, he said that it invariably
followed; that leaving off the opium unlocked all the secretions, and the
diarrhoea was a natural consequence. I was not using much morphia at this
time. The quantity was indeed so small that the physician almost ridiculed
the idea of my being in the habit at all. I knew better than that,
however. He said it was hardly necessary to give anything to check the
diarrhoea, in fact, that it was almost useless, and unless it actually
became too severe, it was better to let it take its own course; that when
it stopped of its own accord I would perceive that I was better. He gave
me a few powders to take along, nevertheless, which I did not find it
necessary to use.
I stopped square off. The first day I felt meanly and sleepy, and had such
an influx of remorseful and melancholy thoughts, and such a complete loss
of command over myself, that I could have wept the livelong day,--I felt
so crushed and broken-hearted. The second day was similar to the first,
except the diarrhoea now set in. On the third day I began to feel more
comfortable in some respects, the sleepy, drowsy feeling having passed
away; I also had gained a little more command over my feelings, though I
was still morbidly sensitive, sad, and broken in spirit, and at a word
would have burst into tears. The diarrhoea was rushing off at a fearful
rate; but that I did not mind much,--it was carrying away my trouble, and
this was what I desired. My stomach and bowels were in an unsettled,
surging, and wishy-washy condition, the gastric processes so completely
disturbed that my stomach was no stomach, and felt simply like a
bottomless pipe that ran straight through me. I describe these phenomena
now thus particularly, not because I had not observed them in previous
attempts, but because I have not described any other attempts to the
reader. I intend, as I proceed with this narrative to describe the effect
of morphia at the beginning, and at and up to the time of which I am now
writing, and its effect years after, and the phenomena observed and
suffering undergone in attempting to abandon its use in the latter years.
The experienced reader will observe, from the attending phenomena which I
have so far described, that I was not very deep into it at the period now
referred to.
Generally, during the day (to recur to the subject in hand), did my
stomach feel like a straight and bottomless pipe, but when I attempted to
eat or drink I felt as though it incorporated a volcano; and every time I
thought of food its whirling, surging contents threatened an eruption and
overflow. Everything eaten seemed perfectly insipid and tasteless, and to
fall flat upon the very bottom of my bowels. The region "round about" my
epigastrium was in a state of communistic insurrection and rebellion.
Nothing digested during this time, or if anything, digestion was very
imperfect. Nothing remained in me long enough to pass through a complete
process of digestion. I did not become hungry. To eat a meal of victuals
was precisely like taking a dose of physic, only much more quick in
operation. I experienced constant flushes of heat and cold (hot flushes
predominating), and was in a continual perspiration, all the secretions
being thrown wide open. My flesh seemed stretched tightly after the third
day, and at night my limbs pained me,--principally my legs below the
knees. I could do, and did, nothing but stand and gaze vacantly; too
nerveless and shattered to attempt any mental labor.
My voice was hollow and weak, and sometimes almost inarticulate. After the
fifth day my remorseful and melancholy thoughts and feelings gave way, to
some extent, to more cheerful ones. I continued ten days without touching
morphia, or anything of the kind. By that time my diarrhoea had ceased,
and my stomach about the region of the epigastrium seemed drawn together
as tightly as if tied in a knot. I had some appetite for food, though not
much, and poor digestion. Everything was still quite tasteless to me. I
craved something eternally which seemed absolutely necessary to make up
the proper constitution of my stomach:--and of my happiness, also, I
should add, for this is the whole truth.
The appetite for morphia, which while I was suffering I was able to
control, grew much sharper after I had reached the tenth day, and my pains
and physical difficulties had subsided, as it were. This is a point which
I have ever observed in my case, namely, that, while undergoing severe
pain or suffering, I have had power to resist appetite and carry out my
purposes against the habit, but so soon as the pain or strain upon me
departed, it left me collapsed in my will and powerless. But, in the
instance under consideration, while my stomach was in a disorganized
condition, the appetite was not near so strong as when I regained a more
natural state, when it returned with an irresistible vigor. I believe the
appetite destroys the will as firmly as I do that God exists.
I took a small dose of morphia, thinking I might thus stay the violent
cravings of the appetite, and be thereafter clear of it. The time was in
the midst of a political campaign; I was in a public office as a clerk; my
employer was rendering his fealty to the party that gave him his place,
and I was compelled to remain in the office and work. I was suffering in
secret, my employer knowing nothing of my thraldom, and I could not work
with the accursed appetite raging within me.
The affinity between the brain and the stomach is most plainly
demonstrated by the disease of the opium habit; the appetite feeds as much
on the brain as on the stomach. I could not work; I could do nothing but
look, and that in a blank and dazed way; and being compelled to work, I
took a small dose, thinking that would quiet the enemy and give me peace,
and that thereafter I could probably worry it through. Cruel illusion! My
unhappy fate willed differently, and the peculiar effects of opium can
only be learned by bitter experience. I fell prostrate as before, with
this difference, that I was less hopeful.
Oh, the melancholy years that have intervened between then and now!
Hopeless upon a dark and boundless sea, drifting farther and farther from
land! Oh, the youthful aspirations that have been wrecked by, and gone
down forever in, this all-swallowing deep!--the mortifications,
disappointments, and humiliations that stand out upon this black ocean of
despair, and like huge and abortive figures of deformity mock me in my
dreams, and taunt me in my waking hours! For I sing only the "pains" of
opium; its "pleasures" I have yet to see. For that cannot be accounted a
pleasure which is attended with sadness, and that stimulation will not be
considered a benefit which is followed by reaction and collapse.
De Quincey says that he never experienced the collapse and depression
consequent upon indulgence in opium. The first doses I took, though they
stimulated me to the skies, sickened me at the same time, and left me in
such a collapsed condition that it required twenty-four hours to
completely recover. I do admit that, when one's sensibilities have become
deadened and hardened by long use of opium, when all the fervor is burnt
out of one, and it no longer stimulates, or its stimulation is barely
perceptible,--that then, indeed, there is not much reaction. But what
eater of opium, after taking much of the drug the day previous, ever
arose in the morning without feeling unutterably miserable? What would you
call this, unless reaction?
"The time has been, my senses would have cool'd
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir,
As life were in't."
And I could not even go into an unlighted room after nightfall without the
most terrifying feelings of abject fear. There was not a night came during
a certain period without bringing with it the most harrowing and dreadful
forebodings of death before morning. I must in justice state that I was
using some quinine at this time to break up a fever that was continually
attacking me, and that I was then again using morphia by means of the
hypodermic syringe (having been induced to adopt that mode by another
person who was using it in the same way,--which I found to be much more
injurious than taking it per mouth); nevertheless, it was still the opium
habit, and it was that which induced the fever, and made necessary the
quinine.
No tongue or pen will ever describe--mine shrinks from the attempt, and
the imagination of another, without suffering it all, could scarcely
conceive it possible--the depth of horror in which my life was plunged at
this time; the days of humiliation and anguish, nights of terror and
agony, through which I dragged my wretched being. But I am anticipating
other and future parts of this narration. It is my intention to disclose,
as I proceed, the effects of opium from the first dose, and commencement
of the habit, till it reaches its ultimate and final effects, and to
describe an attempt to renounce its use at the latter stage.
Still, I have thought it proper, even at this juncture, to give the reader
to understand that the opium habit, from first to last, produces nothing
but misery,--and that of a kind entirely without hope in this world. This
I expect to prove in detail as I proceed.