OPIUM AND ALCOHOL COMPARED.
The manuscript of the narrative which follows was placed in the hands of the compiler by a physician of Philadelphia who for many years had shown great kindness to its writer, in the endeavor to cure him of his pernicious habits. The writer seems from childhood to have been cursed with an excessive sensibility, and an unusual constitutional craving for excitement, coupled with an infirm and unreliable will. The habit of daily dependence upon alcohol appears to have been established for years before the use of opium was commenced; and the latter was begun chiefly for the purpose of substituting the excitement of the drug in place of the excitement furnished by brandy and wine. That any human being can permanently substitute the daily use of the one in place of the daily use of the other is more than doubtful. Attempts of this kind are not unfrequently made, but the result is uniformly the same—a double tyranny is established which no amount of resolution is sufficient to conquer. This fact is so forcibly illustrated in this autobiography, that although it is chiefly a story of suffering from the use of alcoholic stimulants, its insertion here may serve as a caution to that class of persons, not inconsiderable in number, who are tempted to substitute one ruinous habit in place of another.
I am inclined to think I must have been born, if not literally with a propensity to stimulus, at least with a susceptibility to fall readily into the use of it; for my ancestors, so far as I know, all used alcohol, though none of them, I believe, died drunkards. One of my earliest recollections is that of seeing the tumbler of sling occasionally partaken of by the elders of the family, even before breakfast, and of myself with the other children being sometimes gratified with a spoonful of the beverage or the sugar at the bottom. Paregoric, too—combining two of the most dangerous of all substances, alcohol and opium—was a favorite medicine of my excellent mother, and in all the little ailments of childhood was freely administered. So highly thought she of it that on my leaving home at fifteen for Cambridge University she put a large vial of it in my trunk, with the injunction to take of it, if ever sick.
In my young days I saw alcohol used everywhere. How in those days any body failed of the drunkard's grave seems hardly less than miraculous. How I myself escaped becoming inebriate for more than twenty-five years, is with my organization, a deep mystery.
I can remember, when quite young, occasionally drinking—as I saw every body else do, boys as well as men, and even women—and I recollect also being two or three times overcome with liquor, to my infinite horror and shame not less than bodily suffering. At fifteen, as I said, I entered Harvard University, perfectly free from the habit of drinking as from all other bad habits. Here too, as everywhere before, I saw alcohol flowing copiously, the most prevalent kind being wine.
On Exhibition and Commencement Days, every student honored with a "part" was accustomed at his room to make his friends and acquaintances free of the cake-basket and especially of the wine-cup. A good deal of wine and punch too was drank at the private "Blows" (so called) of the students, at the meetings of their various clubs, at their military musterings, and other like occasions. At all such times there was more or less intoxication. I can remember being a good deal disordered with wine two or three times during my four college years, and I have no doubt I was considerably affected by it more times than these; still scholastic ambition, somewhat diligent habits of study, straitened means, and the want of any special inclination for artificial stimulus carried me through college without my having contracted any habit of drinking or having grown to depend at all upon stimulants.
But deteriorating causes had been at work, and though the volcano had not burst forth as yet, the material had been silently gathering through these four seemingly peaceful years. In the winter of my sixteenth or seventeenth year, after suffering several days from severe toothache, I was induced by my landlady, a pipe-smoker, to try tobacco as a remedy. The result of this trial, which proved effectual, was that partly from the old notion that tobacco was a teeth- preservative, and partly, I suppose, because the taste was hereditary, I fell at once into the habit of tobacco-chewing, which I continued without intermission for eleven years. In this abominable practice I exercised no moderation: indeed in any practice of this kind it has seemed constitutional with me to go to excess, and unnatural to pursue a middle course. None at all or too much was the alternative exacted by my organization. By consequence, the perpetual, unmeasured waste of saliva induced by using such immoderate quantities of this weed must speedily have exhausted a constitution not endowed with unusual vital energies. As it was I must have received deep injury. I often felt faintness and languor, though I did not or would not admit what now I have no doubt of—that this vegetable was in fault.
At nineteen, graduating at Cambridge, I took and kept for the three following years an academy in a near neighboring town. Here I soon began to suffer (what I now suppose) the ill effects of the false education and false living (the tobacco-chewing, physical inertness, mental partialness, and the rest) of long foregoing years. I began to suffer greatly from gloom and depression of spirits. Short fits of morbid gayety and long stretches of dullness and darkness made up the present, while the future looked almost wholly black. I had indeed been afflicted so long as I could remember with seasons of low spirits, but these glooms, for depth and long continuance, transcended any thing I had ever experienced before. On festive occasions, at which I was often present, I was accustomed to take a glass or half-glass of wine with and like the rest; but other than this, I used no stimulus and never had thought of keeping any at my lodgings. In fact, so little was I seasoned in this way that half a glass of ordinary wine was enough to elevate my spirits many degrees above their usual pitch. I know not why it never occurred to me to use habitually what I found occasionally to be such a relief. A few months after commencing school I attended with a party of friends the celebration of the Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. The orator was exceedingly eloquent; the occasion one of great enthusiasm; and what with my intense previous excitement of mind, what with my unseasoned brain, and what with the universal example of the wise and good about me, I took so much wine at the public dinner as to be completely intoxicated, and was only able after three or four hours of sleep to attend the Pilgrim Ball. My shame, remorse, and horror on this occasion was so far salutary that without any special resolution I was for a long time after, a total abstinent. In fact this monitory influence lasted with more or less force for six or seven years. But the gloom and depression before spoken of came to a crisis. About a year after my leaving college I broke down with a severe attack of dyspepsia. A weight pressing continually on my chest, palpitation of the heart, sleeplessness by night, or dreams that robbed sleep of all repose, debility, languor, and increased gloom—such are some of the symptoms that hung oppressively upon me for more than a year.
Under these circumstances I took a physician's advice. By his orders I swallowed I know not how many bottles of bitters. Whether from their effect or from Nature's curative power in despite of them, my ailments at last mostly disappeared; but to this very hour I have been more or less subject to the same physical inertness and unexcitability, low spirits, and many like symptoms. No unexperienced person can imagine what a life it is to be thus physically but half alive. The temptation is incessant to raise by artificial helps the physical tone, in order thus to attain activity and energy of mind. My only wonder is that I did not sooner resort to what would at least give temporary relief to the depression and torpor from which I suffered so much and so long.
After keeping school three years, being the last of the three a member of the Cambridge Divinity School, I passed two years at that school and was licensed to preach. My life there was the same false, unnatural one it had been in college—much study and no bodily exercise, a few faculties active and the greater number exercised scarce at all. All this while, with the exception of tobacco, I used no stimulants except on rare occasions, and then always in moderation.
In August, 1829, I was licensed as a preacher by the Boston Ministerial Association. In the December following I was ordained a minister at Lynn, Mass. In May, 1830, I was married, and in the succeeding autumn became a housekeeper. Immediately on becoming an ordained clergyman I procured one or two demijohns of wine as a preparative for hospitality to my clerical brethren and to visitants generally. Such was the custom universally, and in various ways I was given to understand that I too must adopt it. Keeping wine at home now for the first time, I tasted it doubtless oftener than ever before, though still not habitually or with any approach to excess. Furthermore, a member of my family, in debilitated health and a dyspeptic, was ordered by the family physician, one of the most distinguished of the Boston Faculty, to take brandy and water with dinner as a tonic. A demijohn of brandy therefore took its place in the closet beside the demijohn of wine already there, and on the daily dinner-table was set a decanter of this liquid fire. For myself I had as already intimated never perfectly recovered from my ancient dyspeptic attack, nor was my present way of life very favorable to health. To replenish this waste, a good deal of bodily exercise was needed, but of such exercise I took scarce any at all.
It was then no uncommon thing for a minister to sit down on Saturday evenings with a pot of green tea as strong as lye, or of coffee black as ink, and a box of cigars beside him—drinking at the one and puffing at the other all or most of the night through—and under the excitement of these nerve-rasping substances trace rapidly on paper the words which next day were to thrill or melt his listeners. A final cup of tea or coffee, extra strong, and a last cigar before entering the pulpit, gave him that fervor and unction of manner so indispensable to eloquence. His theme, perhaps, was intemperance; and with nerves tingling from the action of liquids which no swine will drink, and of the plant which no swine will eat, he would portray most vividly the terrible ruin wrought by intoxicating drink. Do not believe, however, that in all this he was dishonest or hypocritical; he was merely self-ignorant—blind to the fact that in condemning the alcoholic inebriate he was by every word condemning himself as well. This ignorance, however, could not obviate the effects of such hideous outrage on the physical laws. I have dwelt on these points partly for their intrinsic truth and importance, and partly as hearing upon and explaining my own case. In ill health, languid and restless from the causes pertaining to my then condition, I found in brandy or wine a temporary relief for that languor and sedative for that restlessness. When necessitated to write, and the mind was dull because the body was sluggish, instead of seeking the needed life in tea and coffee and tobacco-smoking, I found it more readily in brandy or wine. In short, I began somewhat to depend on these stimulants for the excitement I required for my work. I hardly need say I dreamed of neither wrong nor danger in so doing, and it was yet a good while before a case of intoxication awoke me from this false security. Thus three years passed, at the close of which I removed to Brookline for the health of a friend apparently declining in consumption. Just before leaving I cast away the tobacco which I had used largely for ten or eleven years. The struggle was a hard one, and the faintness and uneasy cravings which long tormented me operated, I think, as a temptation to replace the lost stimulus by increased quantities of alcoholic stimulus. Under these circumstances I went to Brookline in the beginning of February, 1833, and for three or four months I shut myself up as sole attendant and nurse of a sick friend, apparently dying. I had no external employment compelling my attention; there were no outward objects to call me off from my infirmities and uneasy sensations. I was alone with all these—alone with sickness and coining death—alone with a gloomy present and a clouded future—and the bottle stood near, promising relief. It is not very strange that I resorted oftener than before to its treacherous comfort, and became more than ever accustomed to depend upon it. I believe, however, that only once during these months was I positively overcome by it, and I was very ready to cheat myself into the belief that other causes were in fault besides, and as much as alcohol. The ensuing summer I spent partly in Cambridge and partly in travelling with the invalid who still survived; and with health considerably improved I continued stimulus, though I think in rather less quantities than in the winter preceding. Once, however, I was badly intoxicated with port wine, and so ill as greatly to alarm my friends and induce them to call in a physician, who administered a powerful emetic. Whether or not he understood the nature of my ailment I never knew. My friends I think did not, and I was very willing to cheat myself into the belief that the wine thus affected me because I was ill from other causes.
At the close of August of this year I went to Brooklyn, New York, to preach for a few Sundays to a handful of persons who had just united to attempt forming a new religious society. I remained through the winter following. A society was gathered; I was installed over it, and there continued till the summer of 1837. These four years were to me tremendous years. They seem to me, in looking back, like a long, sick, feverish dream. Even now I can hardly but shudder at the remembrance of glooms of midnight blackness and sufferings that mock all endeavors at description: for it absolutely appears to me on the review that not for one week of these four years was I a free, healthful, sober, man; not one week but I was rent by a fierce conflict between "the law of the members and the law of the mind." How it was I executed the amount I did, of intellectual labor—how it was I accomplished the results I did, Is to me an impenetrable mystery. I began to address in a hired school-house a handful of persons, having most of them but a slight mutual acquaintance, and in my farewell discourse I addressed a fair-sized, closely-united congregation assembled in their own conveniently-spacious church, with the organization and all the customary belongings of the oldest worshiping societies. Not one Sunday of that time was I disenabled by my fatal habits to perform the customary offices; but I did not understand my condition in any thing like its reality as now I look back upon it. My actual state was known to but very few in its entireness—I may say to absolutely none of those I daily companied with—and I did at the close of that period receive an honorable dismissal at my own request, a request made for reasons distinct from this; nor between myself and people, or any of them, was there ever a word exchanged on this subject from first to last. "Truth is strange, stranger than fiction."
I shall not attempt going through these years in detail. I went to Brooklyn with the habit of depending on alcohol to a considerable extent for physical tone and mental excitement, though not with the habit of losing my balance thereby.
It was some time after establishing myself in New York before I became at all awake to my condition. At considerable intervals I had two or three attacks of convulsionary fits. My physician gave them some name—I hardly remember what—but he did not specify the cause. I now understand them to have been intoxication fits. I suspected then that alcohol had some connection with them, and I was so far aroused to this and other evils of my way of life that I attempted total abstinence. But besides a host of uneasy sensations, I at once experienced such a lack of bodily strength and of mental life and activity that to think or write, or apply myself to my tasks generally, I found impossible.
After making several abortive attempts of this kind, I tried at last the substitution of laudanum for alcohol. It was a most fatal move! for the final result was a bondage of which previously I had not even a conception. At first, however, I seemed as though lifted out of the pit into Paradise. Instead of the feverish, tumultuous excitement of alcohol, I experienced a calm, equable, thrilling enjoyment. My whole being was exalted from its previous turmoil and perturbation and heat, to dwell in a region of serenity and peace and quiet bliss. But alas for the reverse side of the picture! The total prostration, the depth of depression, the more than infantile feebleness following the reaction of this excitement—the multitude of uneasy, uncomfortable, often bewildering sensations pertaining to the habit, are such as can not be conveyed to one inexperienced in the matter. But any one may decide that the presence and incorporation with the system, in large quantities, of a poison which is so deadly a foe to life and all life's movements can not be without very marked and baneful results. The fact is that there is not one out of the thousand various functions of the body which is not deranged and turned away by this cause, and the movements of the mind and heart are from sympathy hardly less morbid. Whether such a state must not be one of sufferings many, and often frightful, every one may judge.
But worse even than this followed. It was not very long before the opium nearly lost its power to excite and enliven, though it still kept an inexorable clutch on every fibre of my frame, and I was compelled to take it daily to keep the very current of life flowing.
To make my condition worse still, while obliged to use opium daily to prolong even this existence—gloomy and apathetic as it was—I found that in order to think or work with any thing of vigor I absolutely required, every now and then, some excitement which opium now would not give. I tried, therefore, strong tea and coffee and tobacco-smoking. But all these were not enough, and I found there was nothing for me but to try alcohol again; so that the upshot of my experiment of substituting opium for alcohol was, that I got opium, alcohol, tea, coffee, and tobacco-smoking fastened upon me all at once and all in excessive quantities; and the consequence of using alcohol was that no caution I could employ would secure me from occasional intoxication. Such was my physical derangement that I never could be certain beforehand of the degree of effect which alcoholic stimulus would exert upon me, and the same quantity which at one time would produce only the excitement I sought, would under other physical conditions completely overcome me.
During my last two years in Brooklyn I made several attempts to break away from opium and other stimulus, and each time made considerable progress. But the same circumstances yet existed that originally led to the evil, and in fact others of the same class had been superadded, while the whole operated with aggravated force, so that I found or thought it impossible to achieve my freedom without disclosing my state, and thus, as I supposed, setting the seal to my own temporal ruin. Once and again, therefore, I went back to my dungeon.
It may here be remarked that the sedentary man has extraordinary difficulties to contend with in such a case. His occupation being lonely, and demanding no bodily exertion, he has little or nothing to draw off, perforce, his attention from the innumerable aches and tormenting sensations which beset him, sometimes for months without cessation, in going through the extricating process. To sit still and endure long-protracted torment demands a resolution compared with which the courage that carries one into a battle-field is a paltry thing.
But this bondage so galling, this position so false in all ways, and so severely condemned alike by conscience and honor, determined me at last to attempt my freedom at the cost even of life, if need be. I broke up housekeeping, sent my family away, and commenced the struggle. I had a bad cold at the time, besides a complication of various cares and distresses which probably increased the severity of the trial. Violent brain-fever came on, accompanied with universal inflammation and a host of sensations for which I never could find any name. It seemed as if my arteries and veins ran with boiling water instead of blood, and as the current circulated through the brain I felt as if it actually boiled up against and tossed the skull at the top of my head, as you have seen the water in a tea-kettle rattling the lid. My hearing was affected in a thousand strange ways: I heard a swimming noise which went monotonously on for weeks without cessation. The ocean, with all its varieties of sound, was forever in my hearing. Sometimes I heard the long billowy swell of the sea after a hard blow; again I could hear the sharp, fuming collision of waves in a storm; and then for hours I would listen to the solemn, continuous roar, intermitted with the booming, splashing wash of the tempest-roused surge upon the beach. Almost incessantly, too, I heard whisper ing, sharp and hissing, on every side—outside and inside of my room—and the whisperers I imagined were all saying hard things of myself.
Meantime my mind was under tremendous excitement, and all its faculties, especially the imagination, were preternaturally active, vivid, and rapid-working. Such was my mental excitement and bodily irritation that for ten days and nights I slept hardly at all, nor enjoyed one moment's release from pain. That I was thoroughly in earnest in what I had undertaken will appear from the fact that all this time I had in a drawer within reach a bottle of laudanum, which I knew would in a few moments give me ease and sleep. Yet thus agonized and half delirious, I notwithstanding left it untouched. I was mostly confined to the house about four weeks. The inflammation gradually subsiding left me as weak as a child—so morbidly sensitive that tears flowed on the slightest occasion, and with my whole frame pervaded by a dull, incessant ache. To these symptoms were added coldness of the extremities, an obstinate determination of blood to the head, which swelled the vessels of the face and brain almost to bursting, susceptibility to fatigue on the least exertion, physical or mental, and so great a confusion and wandering of thought that it was only by a violent effort that my mind could be brought to act continuously or with the least vigor.
As soon as I was able to go abroad I joined my family in the neighborhood of Boston, in the hope of benefiting by change of scene. Remaining here for several months without much improvement of health, I felt called on for various reasons to resign my charge in New York. Thus left with a family and very slender resources, I was compelled, feeble as I was, to bestir myself for their and my own support. No employment offered itself but that of my profession, and unfit, therefore, as I felt myself, body and mind, for this, I saw no alternative but to preach as occasion presented. It was a most cruel necessity, for without some artificial aid I was unable even to stand through the pulpit services. As a choice of evils I used wine and brandy; for the terrors of opium were still too recent.
In the closing part of December, 1837, I went to the city of Washington to preach for six or seven Sundays. The same necessity, real or supposed, of stimulating, followed me through the six weeks of my stay there. One day at the close of this period, feeling unusually ill and languid, I sent a servant out for a bottle of brandy. I remember pouring out and drinking a single glass of it, and this is the last and whole of my recollection for two days. I awoke and was told I had been exceedingly ill. I must have been very badly intoxicated, though how or why I was so, I know not to this day. So soon as I could hold up my head I went by invitation to Baltimore, and stayed there some three weeks with a college friend. While there I learned from various sources that I was at last palpably and generally exposed and disgraced. I relinquished my profession at once both in reality and name, deeming this the least I could do in the circumstances. About the middle of March, 1838, with shattered, miserable health, overwhelmed with regret and shame and remorse, and the future palled with funereal black, I set out for the residence of relatives in Vermont. Here I remained two and a quarter years, studying law with my sister's husband, who was an attorney and counsellor. For several months I used no stimulus except tobacco, which in the desperate restlessness of the previous summer I had again began to chew after four years' interruption. I of course was weak and languid from this great abstraction of stimulus, coupled with the effects of the severe illness I had undergone. This debility rendered more severe the endurance of other evils of my condition. No wonder that under such wear and tear my nervous system should have become shattered. I was attacked with tic-douloureux. Though suffering severely, old recollections gave me such dread of anodyne and tonic medicines—which I thought it most likely would be administered—that I delayed for some time seeking medical advice. Pain, however, at last drove me to it, and from two physicians I received a prescription of morphlne and quinine. I knew that morphine was a preparation of opium, but supposing it a preparation leaving out the stimulating and retaining only the sedative properties of the drug, I imagined it less dangerous than crude opium. With this opinion—with excruciating pain on one side and on the other relief in the physicians' prescription— it is not very strange I chose relief. I used the morphine until apparently the neuralgic affection was cured. On attempting then to lay it aside I found the habit of stimulating again fastened upon me. Once more I found myself neither more nor less than a bond slave to opium to all intents and purposes. With my existing physical debility, with a pressing host of perplexities and tribulations, and with my appalling remembrances of the former struggle, I could not summon resolution and perseverance enough to achieve a second emancipation. So regulating the quantity as well as I could, I waited in hope of some more auspicious season for the attempt.
In the latter part of June, 1840, I went to New York city to complete my third year of legal study. I was at the time weak in body and low-spirited, and my debility was increased by the extraordinary heat of the weather. I was disappointed too in several arrangements on which I had reckoned. The result of all this was a want of physical and moral energy which precluded the attempt at emancipation from opium which I had purposed to make on my arrival; and worse than this, I found myself rapidly getting into the way of adding brandy to opium to procure the desired amount of excitement, as had formerly been the case. I came to the conclusion that I could not achieve my freedom alone, but must have help. I had no home, and after casting about I could devise no better scheme than to enter the Insane Hospital at Bloomingdale. I accordingly went there and stayed thirteen weeks. I found on arriving, that neither myself nor the friends I had advised with had understood the conditions of a residence in that Institution; for to their disappointment and mine I was locked into the lunatic ward and at total abandonment of stimulus, in a state of intense nervous excitement, I was for several days, especially during nights, kept on the very verge of frenzy by the mutterings and gibberings, the howlings and horrid execrations of the mad creatures, my neighbors. Without occupation for mind or body—with all things disturbing about me—with deeply depressing remembrances, and the future showing black as midnight—I remained here three months, and it is marvellous that these causes alone did not utterly destroy me. But to fill up the measure, I was attacked with fever and ague, which kept me burning and freezing, shaking and aching, for several weeks, and reduced me to such a degree of feebleness that I kept my bed most of the time. Thus I left the Institution more shattered physically than when I entered—so shattered that it was full two years before I regained my customary measure of bodily strength.
It being now the first of December, 1840, I entered a law office in Wall Street, where I remained till the following July. For some months I enjoyed a glimpse of sunshine and had the hope of being established in business by my employer. But in the spring of 1841 his business fell off so largely that he dismissed three clerks who were there on my entering, and counselled me to seek some more promising sphere. Thus I was again afloat, knowing not whither to turn, and so discouraged as to care little what became of me. One thing only seemed stable and permanent, and that was the temptation to seek a temporary exhilaration in my depression, and a brief oblivion of my troubles, in alcohol.
By another change, in the fore part of July, 1841, I entered Judge 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.