The Opium Habit

by Horace B. Day

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 eight thousand drops to so small a one, comparatively speaking, as a quantity ranging between three hundred and one hundred and sixty 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 one hundred and seventy or one hundred and eighty drops had been my ordinary allowance for many months. Occasionally I had run up as high as five hundred, and once nearly to seven hundred. In repeated preludes to my final experiment I had also gone as low as one hundred 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—one hundred and thirty drops a day for three days; on the fourth I plunged at once to eighty. 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 sixty, 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; that is, upward 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 twenty-five drops; then abstained; and so on.

Meantime the symptoms which attended my case for the first six weeks of the 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, among 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 Theodoret?' 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 can not 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 neighboring 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, etc.—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 labored, 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 tracing 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 any way referable to opium, positively considered, or even negatively; that is, whether it is to be numbered among the last evils from the direct action of opium or even among 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, etc., 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 which I inhabit, which had about that 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 connection with the latter stage of my bodily wretchedness—except indeed as an occasional cause, as having left the body weaker and more crazy, and thus predisposed to any mal-influence whatever—I willingly spare my reader all description of it. Let it perish to him; and would that I could as easily say, let it perish to my own remembrances, that any future hours of tranquillity may not be disturbed by too vivid an ideal of possible human misery!

So much for the sequel of my experiment As to the former stage, in which properly lies the experiment and its application to other cases, I must request my reader not to forget the reason for which I have recorded it. This was a belief that I might add some trifle to the history of opium as a medical agent. In this I am aware that I have not at all fulfilled my own intentions, in consequence of the torpor of mind, pain of body, and extreme disgust to the subject which besieged me while writing that part of my paper; which part being immediately sent off to the press (distant about five degrees of latitude), can not be corrected or improved. But from this account, rambling as it may be, it is evident that thus much of benefit may arise to the persons most interested in such a history of opium—viz., to opium-eaters in general—that it establishes for their consolation and encouragement the fact that opium may be renounced without greater sufferings than an ordinary resolution may support, and by a pretty rapid course of descent.

On which last notice I would remark that mine was too rapid, and the suffering therefore needlessly aggravated; or rather perhaps it was not sufficiently continuous and equably graduated. But that the reader may judge for himself, and above all that the opium-eater who is preparing to retire from business may have every sort of information before him, I subjoin my diary.

FIRST WEEK
Drops of Laud.
Monday, June 24……. 130
Tuesday, " 25……. 140
Wednesday, " 26……. 130
Thursday, " 27……. 80
Friday, " 28……. 80
Saturday, " 29……. 80
Sunday, " 30……. 80

SECOND WEEK
Drops of Laud.
Monday, July 1…….. 80
Tuesday, " 2…….. 80
Wednesday, " 3…….. 90
Thursday, " 4…….. 100
Friday " 5…….. 80
Saturday, " 6…….. 80
Sunday, " 7…….. 80

THIRD WEEK
Drops of Laud.
Monday, July 8…….. 300
Tuesday, " 9…….. 50
Wednesday, " 10
Thursday, " 11 Hiatus in
Friday, " 12 MS
Saturday, " 13
Sunday, " 14……. 76