The Opium Habit

by Horace B. Day

The only person outside of my family to whom I had confided the purpose in which I was engaged was a gentleman with whom I had some slight business relations, and who I knew would honor any demands I might make in the way of money. I had assured him that by New Year's Day I should have taken opium for the last time, and that any extravagance of expenditure would not probably last beyond that date. Upon this assurance, but confessedly having little or no faith in it, he asked me to dine with him on the auspicious occasion.

So uncomfortable had my condition and feelings become in the rapid descent from eighty grains to twenty in less than a week, that I determined for the future to diminish the quantity by only a single grain daily, until the habit was finally mastered. In the twenty-nine days which now remained to the first of January, the nine days more than were needed, at the proposed rate of diminution, would, I thought, be sufficient to meet any emergency which might arise from occasional lapses of firmness in adhering to my self-imposed task, and more especially for the difficulties of the final struggle—difficulties I believe to be almost invariably incident to any strife which human nature is called upon to make in overcoming not merely an obstinate habit but the fascination of a long-entranced imagination. Up to this time I had taken the opium as I had always been accustomed to do, in a single dose on awaking in the morning. I now, however, divided the daily allowance into two portions, and after a day or two into four, and then into single grains. The chief advantage which followed this subdivision of the dose was a certain relief to the mind, which for a few days had become fully aware of the power which misery possesses of lengthening out the time intervening between one alleviation and another, and which shrank from the weary continuance of an entire day's painful and unrelieved abstinence from the accustomed indulgence. The first three days from the commencement of this grain by grain descent was marked by obviously increased impatience with any thing like contradiction or opposition, by an absolute aversion to reading, and by a very humiliating sense of the fact that the vis vitae had somehow become pretty thoroughly eliminated from both mind and body. Still, when night came, as with long-drawn steps it did come, there was the consciousness that something had been gained, and that this daily gain, small as it was, was worth all it had cost. The tenth day of the experiment had reduced my allowance to sixteen grains. The effect of this rapid diminution of quantity was now made apparent by additional symptoms. The first tears extorted by pain since childhood were forced out as by some glandular weakness. Restlessness, both of body and mind, had become extreme, and was accompanied with a hideous and almost maniacal irritability, often so plainly without cause as sometimes to provoke a smile from those who were about me.

For a few days a partial alleviation from too minute attention to the pains of the experiment were found in vigorous horseback exercise. The friend to whose serviceableness in pecuniary matters I have already alluded, offered me the use of a saddle-horse. The larger of the two animals which I found in his Stable was much too heroic in appearance for me in my state of exhaustion to venture upon. Besides this, his Roman nose and severe gravity of aspect somehow reminded me, whenever I entered his stall, of the late Judge ——, to whose Lectures on the Constitution I had listened in my youth, and in my then condition of moral humiliation I felt the impropriety of putting the saddle on an animal connected with such respectable associations. No such scruples interfered with the use of the other animal, which was kept chiefly, I believe, for servile purposes. He was small and mean-looking—his foretop and mane in a hopeless tangle, with hay-seed on his eyelids, and damp straws scattered promiscuously around his body.

Inconsiderable as this animal was, both in size and action, he was almost too much for me, in the weak state to which I was now reduced. This much, however, I owe him; disreputable-looking as he was, he was still a something upon whidi my mind could rest as a point of diversion from myself—a something outside of my own miseries. At this time the sense of physical exhaustion had become so great that it required an effort to perform the most common act. The business of dressing was a serious tax upon the energies. To put on a coat, or draw on a boot, was no light labor, and was succeeded by such a feeling of prostration as required the morning before I could master sufficient energy to venture upon the needed exercise. The distance to my friend's stable was trifling. Sometimes I would find there the negro man to whose care the horses were entrusted, but more frequently he was absent. A feeling of humiliation at being seen by any one at a loss how to mount a horse of so diminutive proportions, would triumph over the sense of bodily weakness whenever he was present to bridle and saddle him. Whenever he was not at hand the task of getting the saddle on the pony's back was a long and arduous one. As for lifting it from its hook and throwing it to its place, I could as easily have thrown the horse itself over the stable. The only way in which it could be effected was by first pushing the saddle from its hook, checking its fall to the floor by the hand, and then resting till the violent action of the heart had somewhat abated; next, with occasional failures, to throw it over the edge of the low manger; then an interval of panting rest. Shortening the halter so far as to bring the pony's head close to the manger, next enabled me easily to push him into a line nearly parallel with it, leaving me barely space enough to pass between. By lengthening the stirrup strap I was enabled to get it across his neck, and by much pulling, finally haul the saddle to its proper place. By a kind of desperation of will I commonly succeeded, though by no means always. Sometimes the mortification and rage at a failure so contemptible assured success on a second trial, with apparently less expenditure of exertion than at first. Occasionally, however, I was forced to call for assistance from sheer exhaustion. The bridling was comparatively an easy matter; with his head so closely tied to the manger little scope was left for dodging. In the irritable condition I was now in, the most trifling opposition made me angry, and anger gave me strength; and in this sudden vigor of mind the issue of our daily struggle was, I believe, with a single exception, on my side.

When I led him into the yard, the insignificance of his appearance, in contrast with the labor it had cost me to get him there, was enough to make any one laugh, excepting perhaps a person suffering the punishment I was then undergoing. Mounting the animal called for a final struggle of determination with weakness. A stone next the fence was the chief reliance in this emergency. It placed me nearly on a level with the stirrup, while the fence enabled me to steady myself with my hand and counteract the tremulousness of the knees, which made mounting so difficult. On one occasion, however, my dread of being observed induced me to make too great an effort. Hearing some one approach, I attempted to raise myself in the stirrup without the aid of stone or fence, but it was more than I could manage. Hardly had I succeeded in raising myself from the ground when my extreme feebleness was manifest, and I fell prostrate upon my back. With the help of the colored woman, the astonished witness of my fall, I finally succeeded in getting upon the horse. Once seated, however, I felt like another person. The vigorous application of a whip, heartily repeated for a few strokes, would arouse the pony into a sullen canter, out of which he would drop with a demonstrative suddenness that made it difficult to keep my seat. In this way considerable relief was obtained for several days from the exasperations produced by the long continuance of pain. After about a fortnight's use of the animal, and when I had learned to be content with half a dozen grains of opium daily, I found myself too weak and helpless to venture on his back, and thus our acquaintance terminated. As this is the first, and probably the last appearance of my equine friend in print, I may as well say that he was sold a short time afterward in the Fifth Street Horse Market, for the sum of forty-three dollars. This is but a meagre price, but the horse had not then become historical.

For the week I was dropping from sixteen grains to nine the addition of new symptoms was slight, but the aggravation of the pain previously endured was marked. The feeling of bodily and mental wretchedness was perpetual, while the tedium of life and occasional vague wishes that it might somehow come to an end were not infrequent. The chief difficulty was to while away the hours of day-light. My rest at night had indeed become imperfect and broken, but still it was a kind of sleep for several hours, though neither very refreshing nor very sound. Those who were about me say that I was in constant motion, but of this I was unconscious. I only recollect that wakening was a welcome relief from the troubled activity of my thoughts. After my morning's ride I usually walked slowly and hesitatingly to the city, but as this occupied only an hour the remaining time hung wearily upon my hands. I could not read—I could hardly sit for five consecutive minutes. Many suffering hours I passed daily either in a large public library or in the book-stores of the city, listlessly turning over the leaves of a book and occasionally reading a few lines, but too impatient to finish, a page, and rarely apprehending what I was reading. The entire mental energies seemed to be exhausted in the one consideration—how not to give in to the tumult of pain from which I was suffering. Up to this time I had from boyhood made a free use of tobacco. The struggle with opium in which I was now so seriously engaged had repeatedly suggested the propriety of including the former also in the contest. While the severity of the struggle would, I supposed, be enhanced, the self-respect and self-reliance, the opposition and even obduracy of the will would, I hoped, be enough increased as not seriously to hazard the one great object of leaving off opium forevcr. Still I dreaded the experiment of adding a feather's weight to the sufferings I was then enduring. An accidental circumstance, however, determined me upon making the trial; but to my surprise, no inconvenience certainly, and scarce a consciousness of the deprivation accompanied it. The opium suffering was so overwhelming that any minor want was aimost inappreciable. The next day brought me down to nine grains of Opium. It was now the sixteenth day of December, and I had still fifteen days remaining before the New Year would, as I had resolved, bring me to the complete relinquishment of the drug. The three days which succeeded the disuse of tobacco caused no apparent intensification of the suffering I had been experiencing. On the fourth day, however, and for the fortnight which succeeded, the agony of pain was inexpressibly dreadful, except for the transient intervals when the effects of the opium were felt.

For a few days I had been driven to the alternative of using brandy or increasing the dose of opium. I resorted to the former as the least of the two evils. In the condition I was now in it caused no perceptible exhilaration. It did however deaden pain, and made endurance possible. Especially it helped the weary nights to pass away. At this time an entirely new series of phenomena presented themselves. The alleviation caused by brandy was of short continuance. After a few days' use, sleep for any duration, with or without stimulants, was an impossibility. The sense of exhausting pain was unremitted day and night. The irritability both of mind and body was frightful. A perpetual stretching of the joints followed, as though the body had been upon the rack, while acute pains shot through the limbs, only sufficiently intermitting to give place to a sensation of nerveless helplessness. Impatience of a state of rest seemed now to have become chronic, and the only relief I found was in constant though a very uncertain kind of walking which daily threatened to come to an end from general debility. Each morning I would lounge around the house as long as I could make any pretext for doing so, and then ride to the city, for at this time the mud was too deep to think of walking. Once on the pavements, I would wander around the streets in a weary way for two or three hours, frequently resting in some shop or store wherever I could find a seat, and only anxious to get through another long, never-ending day.

The disuse of tobacco, together with the consequences of the diminished use of opium, had now induced a furious appetite. Dining early at a restaurant of rather a superior character, where bread, crackers, pickles, etc., were kept on the table in much larger quantities than it was supposed possible for one individual to need, my hunger had become so extreme that I consumed not only all for which I had specially called, but usually every thing else upon the table, leaving little for the waiter to remove except empty dishes and his own very apparent astonishment. This, it should be understood, was a surreptitious meal, as my own dinner-hour was four o'clock, at which time I was as ready to do it justice as though innocent of all food since a heavy breakfast. The hours intervening between this first and second dinner it was difficult to pass away. The ability to read even a newspaper paragraph had ceased for a number of days. From habit, indeed, I continued daily to wander into several of the city book-stores and into the public library, but the only use I was able to make of their facilities consisted in sitting, but with frequent change of chairs, and looking listlessly around me. The one prevailing feeling now was to get through, somehow or anyhow, the experiment I was suffering under.

Early in the trial my misgivings as to the result had been frequent; but after the struggle had become thoroughly an earnest one, a kind of cast-iron determination made me sure of a final triumph. The more the agony of pain seemed intolerable, the more seemed to deepen the certainty of my conviction that I should conquer. I thought at times that I could not survive such wretchedness, but no other alternative for many days presented itself to my mind but that of leaving off opium or dying. I recall, indeed, a momentary exception, but the relaxed resolution lasted only as the lightning-flash lasts, though like the lightning it irradiated for a brilliant instant the tumult that was raging within me. For several days previous to this transient weakness the weather had been heavy and lowering, rain falling irregularly, alternating with a heavy Scottish mist. During one of the last days of this protracted storm my old nervous difficulty returned in redoubled strength. Commencing in the shoulder, with its hot needles it crept over the neck and speedily spread its myriad fingers of fire over the nerves that gird the ear, now drawing their burning threads and now vibrating the tense agony of these filaments of sensation. By a leap it next mastered the nerves that surround the eye, driving its forked lightning through each delicate avenue into the brain itself, and confusing and confounding every power of thought and of will. This is neuralgia—such neuralgia as sometimes drives sober men in the agony of their distress into drunkenness, and good men into blasphemy.

While suffering under a paroxysm of this kind, rendered all the more difficult to endure from the exhausted state of the body—in doubt even, at intervals, whether my mind was still under my own control—an impulse of almost suicidal despair suggested the thought, "Go back to opium; you can not stand this." The temptation endured but for a moment, "No, I have suffered too much, and I can not go back. I had rather die;" and from that moment the possibility of resuming the habit passed from my mind forever.