The anatomy of drunkenness

by Robert Macnish

No one has ever given the respective characters of the malt-liquor and ardent-spirit drunkard with greater truth than Hogarth, in his Beer Alley and Gin Lane. The first is represented as plump, rubicund, and bloated; the second as pale, tottering, and emaciated, and dashed over with the aspect of blank despair.

IV. Modified by Opium.—The drunkenness produced by opium has also some characteristics which it is necessary to mention. The drug is principally employed by the Mahometans. By their religion, these people are forbidden the use of wine,[14] and use opium as a substitute. And a delightful substitute it is while the first excitation continues; for the images it occasions in the mind are more exquisite than any produced even by wine.

There is reason to believe that the use of this medicine has, of late years, gained ground in Great Britain. We are told by the “English Opium-Eater,” whose powerful and interesting “Confessions” have excited so deep an interest, that the practice exists among the work people at Manchester. Many of our fashionable ladies have recourse to it when troubled with vapours, or low spirits: some of them even carry it about with them for the purpose. This practice is most pernicious, and no way different from that of drunkards, who swallow wine and other liquors to drive away care. While the first effects continue, the intended purpose is sufficiently gained, but the melancholy which follows is infinitely greater than can be compensated by the previous exhilaration.

Opium acts differently on different constitutions. While it disposes some to calm, it arouses others to fury. Whatever passion predominates at the time, it increases; whether it be love, or hatred, or revenge, or benevolence. Lord Kaimes, in his Sketches of Man, speaks of the fanatical Faquirs, who, when excited by this drug, have been known with poisoned daggers, to assail and butcher every European whom they could overcome. In the century before last, one of this nation attacked a body of Dutch sailors, and murdered seventeen of them in one minute. The Malays are strongly addicted to opium. When violently aroused by it, they sometimes perform what is called Running-a-Muck, which consists in rushing out in a state of phrensied excitement, heightened by fanaticism, and murdering every one who comes in their way. The Turkish commanders are well aware of the powers of this drug in inspiring an artificial courage; and frequently give it to their men when they put them on any enterprise of great danger.

Some minds are rendered melancholy by opium. Its usual effect, however, is to give rise to lively and happy sensations. The late Duchess of Gordon is said to have used it freely, previous to appearing in great parties, where she wished to shine by the gaiety of her conversation and brilliancy of her wit. A celebrated pleader at the Scotch bar is reported to do the same thing, and always with a happy effect.

In this country opium is much used, but seldom with the view of producing intoxication. Some, indeed, deny that it can do so, strictly speaking. If by intoxication is meant a state precisely similar to that from over-indulgence in vinous or spirituous liquors, they are undoubtedly right; but drunkenness merits a wider latitude of signification. The ecstasies of opium are much more entrancing than those of wine. There is more poetry in its visions—more mental aggrandizement—more range of imagination. Wine, in common with it, invigorates the animal powers and propensities, but opium, in a more peculiar manner, strengthens those proper to man, and gives, for a period amounting to hours, a higher tone to the intellectual faculties. It inspires the mind with a thousand delightful images, lifts the soul from earth, and casts a halo of poetic thought and feeling over the spirits of the most unimaginative. Under its influence, the mind wears no longer that blank passionless aspect which, even in gifted natures, it is apt to assume. On the contrary, it is clothed with beauty “as with a garment,” and colours every thought that passes through it with the hues of wonder and romance. Such are the feelings which the luxurious and opulent Mussulman seeks to enjoy. To stir up the languid current of his mind, satiated with excess of pleasure and rendered sluggish by indolence, he has recourse to that remedy which his own genial climate produces in greatest perfection. Seated perhaps amid the luxuries of Oriental splendour—with fountains bubbling around, and the citron shading him with its canopy, and scattering perfume on all sides—he lets loose the reins of an imagination conversant from infancy with every thing gorgeous and magnificent. The veil which shades the world of fancy is withdrawn, and the wonders lying behind it exposed to view; he sees palaces and temples in the clouds; or the Paradise of Mahomet, with its houris and bowers of amaranth, may stand revealed to his excited senses. Every thing is steeped in poetic exaggeration. The zephyrs seem converted into aërial music, the trees bear golden fruit, the rose blushes with unaccustomed beauty and perfume. Earth, in a word, is brought nearer to the sky, and becomes one vast Eden of pleasure. Such are the first effects of opium; but in proportion as they are great, so is the depression which succeeds them. Languor and exhaustion invariably come after; to remove which, the drug is again had recourse to, and becomes almost an essential of existence.

Opium retains at all times its power of exciting the imagination, provided sufficient doses are taken. But when it has been continued so long as to bring disease upon the constitution, the pleasurable feelings wear away, and are succeeded by others of a very different kind. Instead of disposing the mind to be happy, it now acts upon it like the spell of a demon, and calls up phantoms of horror and disgust. The fancy is still as powerful as ever, but it is turned in another direction. Formerly it clothed all objects with the light of heaven; now it invests them with the attributes of hell. Goblins, spectres, and every kind of distempered vision haunt the mind, peopling it with dreary and revolting imagery. The sleep is no longer cheered with its former sights of happiness. Frightful dreams usurp their place, till, at last, the person becomes the victim of an almost perpetual misery.[15] Nor is this confined to the mind alone, for the body suffers in an equal degree. Emaciation, loss of appetite, sickness, vomiting, and a total disorganization of the digestive functions, as well as of the mental powers, are sure to ensue, and never fail to terminate in death, if the evil habit which brings them on is continued.

Opium resembles the other agents of intoxication in this, that the fondness for it increases with use, and that at last, it becomes nearly essential for bodily comfort and peace of mind. The quantity which may be taken varies exceedingly, and depends wholly upon age, constitution, and habit. A single drop of laudanum has been known to kill a newborn child; and four grains of solid opium have destroyed an adult. Certain diseases, such as fevers, phrensies, &c., facilitate the action of opium upon the system; others, such as diarrhœa, cramp, &c., resist it; and a quantity which would destroy life in the former, would have little perceptible effect in the latter. By habit, enormous quantities of the drug may be taken with comparative impunity. There are many persons in this country who make a practice of swallowing half an ounce of laudanum night and morning, and some will even take from one to two drachms daily of solid opium. The Teriakis, or opium-eaters of Constantinople, will sometimes swallow a hundred grains at a single dose. Nay, it is confidently affirmed that some of them will take at once three drachms in the morning, and repeat the same dose at night, with no other effect than a pleasing exhilaration of spirits. The “English Opium-Eater” himself furnishes one of the most extraordinary instances on record of the power of habit in bringing the body to withstand this drug. He took daily eight thousand drops of laudanum, containing three hundred and twenty grains of opium. This enormous quantity he reduced suddenly, and without any considerable effort, to one thousand drops, or forty grains. “Instantaneously,” says he, “and as if by magic, the cloud of profoundest melancholy which rested upon my brain, like some black vapours which I have seen roll away from the summits of the mountains, drew off in one day—passed off with its murky banners, as simultaneously as a ship that has been stranded, and is floated off by the spring-tide.”

The circumstance of the body being brought by degrees to withstand a great quantity of opium is not solitary, but exists as a general rule with regard to all stimulants and narcotics. A person who is in the habit of drinking ale, wine, or spirits, will take much more with impunity than one who is not; and the faculty of withstanding these agents goes on strengthening till it acquires a certain point, after which it becomes weakened. When this takes place, there is either organic disease or general debility. A confirmed drunkard, whose constitution has suffered from indulgence, cannot take so much liquor, without feeling it, as one who is in the habit of taking his glass, but whose strength is yet unimpaired. It is, I suspect, the same, though probably in a less degree, with regard to opium.

Mithridates, king of Pontus, affords an instance of the effects of habit in enabling the body to withstand poisons; and on the same principle, we find that physicians and nurses who are much exposed to infection, are less liable to take it than those persons whose frames are not similarly fortified.