During the seasons of taking too much (that is, per day, and not per dose), that frequently assail the opium eater, and which, as I have before stated, it is almost impossible to break up, the poor unfortunate passes “a weary time,” silent, passive, dead, in the day; at night deprived of natural sleep; arising in the morning in a suicidal state of mind, he lives “an unloved, solitary thing;” knowing himself to be miserable, yet dreading other evils from taking less; until at last, nature becoming exhausted, sickness, and consequent distaste for, and failure of effect in, opium come to his relief. O God! O God! believe me, reader, ’tis no chimera: I suffer daily untold misery, and some days my wretched condition is almost intolerable.
The inability to take a reasonable quantity is, of course, one of the greatest misfortunes in the habit of opium eating. Jeremy Taylor says that in the regenerate person it sometimes comes to pass that the “old man” is so used to obey that, like the Gibeonites, he is willing to do inferior offices for the simple privilege of abiding in the land. Not so with the opium fiend; he thinks it better to “reign in hell than to serve in heaven;” his reign is absolute wherever he takes up his residence. “There is a medium in all things” except opium eating; there it is up hill and down dale; the poor victim is tossed about like a mariner at sea. But, speaking of mariners, his condition is more like that of the “Ancient Mariner” than is the condition of any one else like his. To him frequently in dreams, both day and night,
“Slimy things do crawl with legs upon the slimy sea.”
There was a period in my experience, now happily passed, thank heaven, when day or night I need only shut my eyes to see groups of enormous sea-monsters and serpents, with frightful heads, coiling and intercoiling about one another. You may, dear reader, whoever you are, rest assured that I indulged this privilege as seldom as possible. During that season, too, I suffered acutely from horrible dreams at night, waking in depths of gloom so appalling, so overpowered and undone, that I could not have borne it to have remained alone. Indeed, I became so afflicted with these nightmares (night horrors being the products of opium), that my wife was charged to turn me clear over and wake me up on the least evidence that I was suffering from one of them. This evidence, she said, came from me in the character of low, painful moans; I, conscious of my predicament when at the worst, always struggled with all my strength, and strained every nerve to cry out at the top of my voice:—I was perfectly powerless. I have always thought it the acme of the ridiculous to attribute to the peculiar formation of De Quincey’s brain a special aptitude for dreaming magnificent dreams. Let any one, bold enough to undertake so costly an experiment, try the virtues of opium in the capacity of producing dreams, and, my word for it, he will either claim a special aptitude for dreaming himself, or, with me, give all the credit to the subtle and mighty powers of opium.
CHAPTER XII.
The Address of the Opium Eater.—How he Occupies his Time.—The Refuge of Solitude and Silence.—Indifference to Society or Company.—Disposition, Predilections, and General Conduct.
The opium eater has but a poor address. The sources of all feeling and geniality are frozen up; he stands stiff, cold, and out of place: or in place as a piece of statuary, to be looked at, as, for instance, the statue of the god of pain, or as a specimen from the contents of Pandora’s box. He is kind and sincere, but cordial he cannot be. His personal appearance is not inviting: shrunken and sallow, and with the air of a man who desires to escape and hide. Business matters and interviews of all kinds are consummated with the greatest possible despatch, and away he goes to some solitary retreat. If he is a business man, he of course must get through with the affairs of the day the best he can; as soon as through with these, he hies with speed to things congenial to his soul.[4] Books and literature are his favorite studies; they constitute his greatest and most constant enjoyment. Sitting in his chair, he alternately reads, writes, and dozes. Solitude and silence are his refuge and fortress, and his chiefest friends: companions of his own choosing. Visitors and company of all kinds are intruders. That this is so is not his fault as a man; it is the result of opium. Opium has unfitted him for the enjoyment of the society of mixed companies, and it is perhaps better that it isolates him also, which secures him from mortification to himself and grief to his friends.
The disposition of the opium eater is mild and quiet, as a rule. All passion is dead,—unless the wretched irritability which comes from loss of natural sleep and other suffering caused by opium can be called passion. His general conduct is mild, simple, and child-like. All the animal is dormant, quite dead. The beautiful, the good, the free from sham, the genuine and unaffected, meet his approval. Anything that shocks by suddenness, that is obtrusive and noisy, he desires to be out of the reach of. Quiet and solitude, with those he loves within call, are his proper element.