For, be it known, everything accomplished by an opium eater is done in the sweat of blood, and with the load of Atlas weighing upon the spirit.
But the reader must pardon me. I seem to gravitate naturally towards the results in the latter stages, to which a great part of that I have just written must apply,—especially where I speak of one having a right to denounce opium “always, even while taking advantage of its best manifestations.” Before opium has injured a man, and in the very commencement of the habit, should he wilfully use the drug as a means of giving him pleasure, and brilliancy to his mind, when the requirements of the habit do not make the taking of the opium necessary, he is to blame; but let him long continue in this practice, and he will find to his sorrow that all the mental power the stimulation of opium can give him would not equal that of his natural abilities, unincumbered by the habit.
CHAPTER X.
The Delusions and Miseries of the First Stages of Opium Eating.
From the first unlucky indulgence “till he that died to-day,” the habitual use of opium is attended with gloom, despondency, and unhappiness.
The victim takes his first dose and feels exalted, serene, confident. His intellectual faculties are so adjusted that he needs but call and they obey; discipline and order reign. His load of care, the tedium of life, his aches and pains, and “the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes,” are all lifted from his shoulders, as the sun lifts the mist-clouds from the river, and care-soothing peace in rich effulgence smiles in upon his soul. The beams pour in, the clouds disperse, and all is bright as noonday.
But this calm is only that which precedes the storm. The nerves, that system of exquisite mechanism in man, have been interfered with and abused. There has been an unnatural strain; the harmony of tension has been disturbed and deranged, and now, instead of discipline and equanimity, cruel disorder and distraction rule the hour, and collapse and utter exhaustion follow.
The above is the great axis around which all these following “petty consequences” revolve. They appear and disappear in their proper orbit according to the law of nature and of opium. One is here to-day, another present to-morrow, or each in turn present at different times during a day, or all of them present at once as effect follows cause. It may be impossible to remember all of these “small annexments” and “petty consequences” that participate in, and go to make up, the “boisterous ruin,” but among which gloom and melancholy take a position in the front rank:—melancholy when under the influence of opium, and gloomy and dispirited when not. A sickening, death-like sensation about the heart; a self-accusing sense of having committed some wrong,—of being guilty before God; a load of fear and trembling, continually abide with and oppress the victim in the first stages;—but more especially when the influence of the drug is dying away. During the height of stimulation, these feelings are submerged to a great extent by the more generous and exciting influence of the drug that causes them; but this period forms but a short space in the total of an opium eater’s existence.