Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
author takes wholly upon himself. What may be the exact amount of the
guilt which he thus appropriates is a very dark question to his own
judgment, and not much illuminated by any of the masters in casuistry
whom he has consulted on the occasion. On the one hand it seems
generally agreed that a promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the
numbers to whom it is made; for which reason it is that we see many
persons break promises without scruple that are made to a whole nation,
who keep their faith religiously in all private engagements, breaches
of promise towards the stronger party being committed at a man’s own
peril; on the other hand, the only parties interested in the promises
of an author are his readers, and these it is a point of modesty in any
author to believe as few as possible—or perhaps only one, in which case
any promise imposes a sanctity of moral obligation which it is shocking
to think of. Casuistry dismissed, however, the author throws himself on
the indulgent consideration of all who may conceive themselves
aggrieved by his delay, in the following account of his own condition
from the end of last year, when the engagement was made, up nearly to
the present time. For any purpose of self-excuse it might be sufficient
to say that intolerable bodily suffering had totally disabled him for
almost any exertion of mind, more especially for such as demands and
presupposes a pleasurable and genial state of feeling; but, as a case
that may by possibility contribute a trifle to the medical history of
opium, in a further stage of its action than can often have been
brought under the notice of professional men, he has judged that it
might be acceptable to some readers to have it described more at
length. _Fiat experimentum in corpore vili_ is a just rule where there
is any reasonable presumption of benefit to arise on a large scale.
What the benefit may be will admit of a doubt, but there can be none as
to the value of the body; for a more worthless body than his own the
author is free to confess cannot be. It is his pride to believe that it
is the very ideal of a base, crazy, despicable human system, that
hardly ever could have been meant to be seaworthy for two days under
the ordinary storms and wear and tear of life; and indeed, if that were
the creditable way of disposing of human bodies, he must own that he
should almost be ashamed to bequeath his wretched structure to any
respectable dog. But now to the case, which, for the sake of avoiding
the constant recurrence of a cumbersome periphrasis, the author will
take the liberty of giving in the first person.
Those who have read the Confessions will have closed them with the
impression that I had wholly renounced the use of opium. This
impression I meant to convey, and that for two reasons: first, because
the very act of deliberately recording such a state of suffering
necessarily presumes in the recorder a power of surveying his own case
as a cool spectator, and a degree of spirits for adequately describing
it which it would be inconsistent to suppose in any person speaking
from the station of an actual sufferer; secondly, because I, who had
descended from so large a quantity as 8,000 drops to so small a one
(comparatively speaking) as a quantity ranging between 300 and 160
drops, might well suppose that the victory was in effect achieved. In
suffering my readers, therefore, to think of me as of a reformed
opium-eater, I left no impression but what I shared myself; and, as may
be seen, even this impression was left to be collected from the general
tone of the conclusion, and not from any specific words, which are in
no instance at variance with the literal truth. In no long time after
that paper was written I became sensible that the effort which remained
would cost me far more energy than I had anticipated, and the necessity
for making it was more apparent every month. In particular I became
aware of an increasing callousness or defect of sensibility in the
stomach, and this I imagined might imply a scirrhous state of that
organ, either formed or forming. An eminent physician, to whose
kindness I was at that time deeply indebted, informed me that such a
termination of my case was not impossible, though likely to be
forestalled by a different termination in the event of my continuing
the use of opium. Opium therefore I resolved wholly to abjure as soon
as I should find myself at liberty to bend my undivided attention and
energy to this purpose. It was not, however, until the 24th of June
last that any tolerable concurrence of facilities for such an attempt
arrived. On that day I began my experiment, having previously settled
in my own mind that I would not flinch, but would “stand up to the
scratch” under any possible “punishment.” I must premise that about 170
or 180 drops had been my ordinary allowance for many months;
occasionally I had run up as high as 500, and once nearly to 700; in
repeated preludes to my final experiment I had also gone as low as 100
drops; but had found it impossible to stand it beyond the fourth
day—which, by the way, I have always found more difficult to get over
than any of the preceding three. I went off under easy sail—130 drops a
day for three days; on the fourth I plunged at once to 80. The misery
which I now suffered “took the conceit” out of me at once, and for
about a month I continued off and on about this mark; then I sunk to
60, and the next day to—none at all. This was the first day for nearly
ten years that I had existed without opium. I persevered in my
abstinence for ninety hours; i.e., upwards of half a week. Then I
took—ask me not how much; say, ye severest, what would ye have done?
Then I abstained again—then took about 25 drops then abstained; and so
on.
Meantime the symptoms which attended my case for the first six weeks of
my experiment were these: enormous irritability and excitement of the
whole system; the stomach in particular restored to a full feeling of
vitality and sensibility, but often in great pain; unceasing
restlessness night and day; sleep—I scarcely knew what it was; three
hours out of the twenty-four was the utmost I had, and that so agitated
and shallow that I heard every sound that was near me. Lower jaw
constantly swelling, mouth ulcerated, and many other distressing
symptoms that would be tedious to repeat; amongst which, however, I
must mention one, because it had never failed to accompany any attempt
to renounce opium—viz., violent sternutation. This now became
exceedingly troublesome, sometimes lasting for two hours at once, and
recurring at least twice or three times a day. I was not much surprised
at this on recollecting what I had somewhere heard or read, that the
membrane which lines the nostrils is a prolongation of that which lines
the stomach; whence, I believe, are explained the inflammatory
appearances about the nostrils of dram drinkers. The sudden restoration
of its original sensibility to the stomach expressed itself, I suppose,
in this way. It is remarkable also that during the whole period of
years through which I had taken opium I had never once caught cold (as
the phrase is), nor even the slightest cough. But now a violent cold
attacked me, and a cough soon after. In an unfinished fragment of a
letter begun about this time to ——, I find these words: “You ask me to
write the ——. Do you know Beaumont and Fletcher’s play of “Thierry and
Theodore”? There you will see my case as to sleep; nor is it much of an
exaggeration in other features. I protest to you that I have a greater
influx of thoughts in one hour at present than in a whole year under
the reign of opium. It seems as though all the thoughts which had been
frozen up for a decade of years by opium had now, according to the old
fable, been thawed at once—such a multitude stream in upon me from all
quarters. Yet such is my impatience and hideous irritability that for
one which I detain and write down fifty escape me: in spite of my
weariness from suffering and want of sleep, I cannot stand still or sit
for two minutes together. ‘I nunc, et versus tecum meditare canoros.’”
At this stage of my experiment I sent to a neighbouring surgeon,
requesting that he would come over to see me. In the evening he came;
and after briefly stating the case to him, I asked this question;
Whether he did not think that the opium might have acted as a stimulus
to the digestive organs, and that the present state of suffering in the
stomach, which manifestly was the cause of the inability to sleep,
might arise from indigestion? His answer was; No; on the contrary, he
thought that the suffering was caused by digestion itself, which should
naturally go on below the consciousness, but which from the unnatural
state of the stomach, vitiated by so long a use of opium, was become
distinctly perceptible. This opinion was plausible; and the
unintermitting nature of the suffering disposes me to think that it was
true, for if it had been any mere _irregular_ affection of the stomach,
it should naturally have intermitted occasionally, and constantly
fluctuated as to degree. The intention of nature, as manifested in the
healthy state, obviously is to withdraw from our notice all the vital
motions, such as the circulation of the blood, the expansion and
contraction of the lungs, the peristaltic action of the stomach, &c.,
and opium, it seems, is able in this, as in other instances, to
counteract her purposes. By the advice of the surgeon I tried
_bitters_. For a short time these greatly mitigated the feelings under
which I laboured, but about the forty-second day of the experiment the
symptoms already noticed began to retire, and new ones to arise of a
different and far more tormenting class; under these, but with a few
intervals of remission, I have since continued to suffer. But I dismiss
them undescribed for two reasons: first, because the mind revolts from
retracing circumstantially any sufferings from which it is removed by
too short or by no interval. To do this with minuteness enough to make
the review of any use would be indeed _infandum renovare dolorem_, and
possibly without a sufficient motive; for secondly, I doubt whether
this latter state be anyway referable to opium—positively considered,
or even negatively; that is, whether it is to be numbered amongst the
last evils from the direct action of opium, or even amongst the
earliest evils consequent upon a _want_ of opium in a system long
deranged by its use. Certainly one part of the symptoms might be
accounted for from the time of year (August), for though the summer was
not a hot one, yet in any case the sum of all the heat _funded_ (if one
may say so) during the previous months, added to the existing heat of
that month, naturally renders August in its better half the hottest
part of the year; and it so happened that—the excessive perspiration
which even at Christmas attends any great reduction in the daily
quantum of opium—and which in July was so violent as to oblige me to
use a bath five or six times a day—had about the setting-in of the
hottest season wholly retired, on which account any bad effect of the
heat might be the more unmitigated. Another symptom—viz., what in my
ignorance I call internal rheumatism (sometimes affecting the
shoulders, &c., but more often appearing to be seated in the
stomach)—seemed again less probably attributable to the opium, or the
want of opium, than to the dampness of the house {21} which I inhabit,
which had about this time attained its maximum, July having been, as
usual, a month of incessant rain in our most rainy part of England.
Under these reasons for doubting whether opium had any connexion with
the latter stage of my bodily wretchedness—except, indeed, as an