De Quincey’s Life rather than his Writings the Best Evidence of the Effect of Opium upon him.—Disapproval of his Manner of Treatment of the Subject in his “Confessions.”—From First to Last the Effect of Opium is to Produce Unhappiness.—The Difference between the Effect of the Drug taken Hypodermically and Otherwise Explained.—The Various Effects of Opium, Stimulative and Narcotic, Described.—The Effect of my First Dose at Beginning of Habit.—Remarks of De Quincey on his First Dose.—My own Remarks as to First Dose.—Difference between Opium and Liquor.—Stimulation is Followed by Collapse.—Melancholy from Beginning.—Nervousness and Distraction of the Intellectual Powers.—Sleeplessness.—Different and Peculiar Influences of the Drug Detailed.—Pressure upon the Brain from Excessive Use of Opium.—Distress in the Epigastrium.—The Working of the Brain Impeded.
De Quincey’s Life rather than his Writings the Best Evidence of the Effect of Opium upon him.—Disapproval of his Manner of Treatment of the Subject in his “Confessions.”—From First to Last the Effect of Opium is to Produce Unhappiness.—The Difference between the Effect of the Drug taken Hypodermically and Otherwise Explained.—The Various Effects of Opium, Stimulative and Narcotic, Described.—The Effect of my First Dose at Beginning of Habit.—Remarks of De Quincey on his First Dose.—My own Remarks as to First Dose.—Difference between Opium and Liquor.—Stimulation is Followed by Collapse.—Melancholy from Beginning.—Nervousness and Distraction of the Intellectual Powers.—Sleeplessness.—Different and Peculiar Influences of the Drug Detailed.—Pressure upon the Brain from Excessive Use of Opium.—Distress in the Epigastrium.—The Working of the Brain Impeded.
Thelife of De Quincey, as gathered from his constant and unguarded, and therefore sincere, expressions of his wretched condition, which he made to others while living, shows the effect opium had upon him much more truthfully than do his writings. His extravagant eulogy of opium, and almost wildly-gay and lively manner of treating such a sardonically solemn subject as the effects of opium, though under the anomalous title, “ThePleasures of Opium,” show the man to have been morally depraved,[1]and utterly regardless of the influence of his writings. The result of the opium habit, first, last, and always, is to bring hopeless unhappiness.
I began taking opium by having it administered through a hypodermic syringe, as the reader is aware. The effect, taking it in this way, differs somewhat from that which follows taking it in the usual way. It is more pleasant, ethereal, and less gross, I may say. It had not previously been possible for me to use morphia in the usual way. I had tried it to relieve myself in a season of severe headaches, and it had given me such a distressing pain in my stomach that I dropped it as a useless remedy, and tried it no more. Taking it per hypodermic injection, it did not seem to come so directly in contact with the sensitive part of my stomach; and there was, therefore, no impediment in the way of my taking it in this manner.
Although the effect of morphia taken hypodermically is more pure, and perhaps more forcible for the time being, its force is expended much more quickly than when taken in the customary way. The effect of a dose of morphia—that is, its immediate and exhilarating effect or influence—may often last but a very short time, and rarely longer than threeor four hours, but the ultimate and narcotic effect does not leave the system until twenty-four hours have elapsed. This is an effect in morphia that can be relied on. In stating that the exhilarating effect may last three or four hours, I mean that it may do this in the first stages of the habit. Of course, all I have to say just now refers to the first stages. But to begin with the second dose, the first having been too heavy, and nearly burst me.
The second dose happened to be the proper quantity, and had the legitimate effect. As I have not the slightest doubt that I was suffering as much, and was just as sensitive, I might (though I will not) expatiate with Mr. De Quincey to the following effect: “Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished, was now a trifle in my eyes; this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me—in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea for all human woes; here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint bottle; and peace of mind sent down in gallons by the mail-coach. But, if I talk in this way,the reader will think I am laughing; and I can assure him that no one will laugh long who deals much with opium; its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion; and in his happiest state, the opium eater cannot present himself in the character ofL’Allegro; even then he speaks and thinks as becomesIl Penseroso. Nevertheless, I have a very reprehensible way of jesting at times in the midst of my own misery; and, unless when I am checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid I shall be guilty of this indecent practice, even in these annals of suffering or enjoyment. The reader must allow a little to my infirm nature in this respect; and with a few indulgences of that sort, I shall endeavor to be as grave, if not drowsy, as fits a theme like opium, so anti-mercurial as it really is, and so drowsy as it is falsely reputed.” I will say, and admit, however, that this second dose of mine highly stimulated me; that I retired from the doctor’s presence in an extremely sentimental condition of complacency and self-assurance, with a partly-defined feeling that the world had injured me; but that I did not care particularly; that the remainder of my life I could live alone and without it very comfortably. Opium does not intoxicate, as liquor, even at the beginning of its use; it does not deprive one of reason or judgment, but, while under its influence, it makes one more sanguine and hopeful.
The next day after taking this first dose, as I maycall it (though second in reality), I was physically wilted and mentally collapsed, and felt a kind of nervous headache whenever I stirred the least from perfect quietness. I was unfit to do any work, a thumping, distressing headache and mental distraction, with nothing but a shaken and nervously exhausted system to withstand it, followed quickly and overpoweringly upon the least exertion. I found myself in wretched plight, and could have exclaimed in the language of our ever-beloved poet:
“I ’gin to be aweary of the sun,And wish the estate o’ the world were now undone.”
It was my experience straight along that for every stimulation I had a corresponding depression. I confess that the drug did stimulate me, and highly enough, but there was always an attending sickishness, and the general tenor of the stimulation was to produce melancholy rather than a healthy cheerfulness of spirit. This melancholy seemed arelaxation, which the mind and feelings could lay back and enjoy sometimes, but the appearance of a mortal and intruder on the scene would throw a person into a deplorable state of irritability and confusion.[2]Thestimulation bred nervousness very fast, and the distraction of the intellectual forces was one of the first and worst consequences and devastations experienced.
After I had come to take the drug daily, I often passed sleepless nights, the brain in uncontrollable action during the whole night. Having started it, I could not stop it at pleasure, and I was then but a novice in the art of opium taking. Yet I do not know, either, but that, had I taken it at any time during the day then, the result would have been the same, as I was still very susceptible to its influence, which, in its shattering effects on the nervous system, extended over the period of twenty-four hours.
After a time, when my body became more benumbed and deadened by opium, and consequently less susceptible to its stimulating influence, I could, and did, so regulate my taking of the drug as to insure sleep at night, and the best digestion possible under the circumstances at meals. But as to sleep, I could not do this in the first stages; the effect was too powerful, and extended over too long a time.
The effect of opium, the reader must bear in mind, always lasts twenty-four hours; but its higher, more refined and stimulating influence exists but a few hours, when it sinks into the soporific effect, which extends over the remainder of the time. In the advanced stages of the opium habit, the stimulating influence, if there be any at all, lasts but a fewminutes. I mean, that is, the pleasurable sensation and revival of the spirits; there may be at times or always an almost imperceptible stimulation which obtains a short time after taking a dose of opium, but this is an effect entirely different from the pleasurable sensation, though it may exist with or follow it for a short time. This I may term stimulation without sensation. A person’s body may be so deadened by opium that it can no longer produce sensation, but may produce slight stimulation for a short time. One may become conscious of this by an increase of power in the faculties of the brain, and in the temporary removal of the obstructions that weigh upon the brain, and which the poor opium eater so often suffers from. “Suffers from?” Days upon days my head has felt as though it were encircled by an iron helmet, which was gradually becoming more and more contracted, until it would literally crush my skull. Add to this the distress so often experienced in the region of the epigastrium (pit of the stomach), which, perhaps, more at one time than another, but which does always, impair the working of the brain for the time being, and often cuts off almost totally the use of the mind, and what is left of a man mentally is very little indeed. Yet all these miseries he must endure, and more; but of these in the proper place, for we must now return to the subject properly in hand,—the first stages of opium eating,—from which I beg the reader’s pardon for having digressed too far.
De Quincey versus Coleridge.—Stimulation and Collapse Considered.—The Use of Opium always to be Condemned.—Coleridge Defended.—Wretched State of the Opium Eater.—An Explanatory Remark.
De Quincey versus Coleridge.—Stimulation and Collapse Considered.—The Use of Opium always to be Condemned.—Coleridge Defended.—Wretched State of the Opium Eater.—An Explanatory Remark.
De Quinceycharges Coleridge with having written many of his best things under the stimulus of opium. This may be so; he could not well write at all without being in some way affected by opium, seeing that he took it every day; but if this applied to the latter stage of opium eating (and I have reason to think it did), the little pleasurable sensation and stimulation he might well take advantage of, as at other times his condition must have been such as to interfere greatly with his writing at all to any purpose. But if this applied to the first stages, and he continued on writing after the stimulation and pleasurable sensation had subsided, his writings must have presented a very zigzag appearance; passing suddenly from the height of pleasure to the depth of misery—falling from the top round of stimulation and enjoyment to the lowest depth of dejection and debility. For it was my invariable experience during the first stages, that for every benefit received in intellectual force from stimulation, Isuffered a corresponding injury or offset in the mental debility and prostration which ensued. The reaction that always followed the long strain of stimulation upon the brain, found me completely wilted and mentally exhausted. Up to the heights and down into the depths was the routine. Glorying in the skies or sweltering in the Styx. Like Sisyphus rolling his stone of punishment up the steep mountain, with which he no sooner reaches the top than away it rebounds to the bottom again, and so on eternally.
In the latter stages, an opium eater cannot be blamed for taking advantage of the little pleasurable sensation which his nepenthe affords him. The enjoyment he gets lasts but a moment, and would not equal the pleasure derived by a healthy and sound man from the simple act of writing. And, as far as power gained from stimulation is concerned, the reader must remember that opium shatters, tears, and wears out the subject as it goes, and that all the benefit he could derive from stimulation, after having become an habituate, could not place his powers upon a level with what they would have been naturally had he never touched opium.
De Quincey speaks of Coleridge as though the latter had denounced opium, and not given it credit for benefits conferred, when the truth is it confers no benefits. It gives, but it takes away, and the highest point stimulation can reach will not elevate aman’s abilities to the plane from which they have fallen, in the latter and confirmed stages of the habit. Therefore, a man can justly and always condemn the use of opium, even while taking advantage of its best manifestations. It is he that is the loser at all times, and not it. The case I wish to make out is just this: When a man is once a confirmed opium eater, all the pleasure he can derive from opium would not equal the enjoyment a well man receives from the animal spirits alone; and all the intellectual force obtainable from stimulation can never approach that which would have been his own freely in a natural condition. Hence, to charge Coleridge with ingratitude to opium—for that is about what it amounts to—is all bosh. It ruined him for poetry, crippled him for everything, and made his life miserable. He did the best he could under the circumstances,—to continue the argument. Had he written at all times without regard to his condition, in the first stages the ravages following stimulation would have so undone his mind, that it would have fallen far short of its natural ability; and had he written from stimulation clear through reaction, his compositions would have been lop-sided things indeed. Or, had he in the advanced stages abnegated the short and only period of intellectual complacency afforded him by opium, and written only during the wretched condition which generally subsists, his productions must of necessity have been more gloomy, and lessable than they are. He had to make the most of his unfortunate situation, and seize his opportunities as they presented. It was impossible to write at all times and in all conditions, and hence he disappointed the expectations of many. Yes, and who blamed him for lacking energy? Oh, ignorant men! When an opium eater, himself surrounded by the same circumstances and in the same condition as Coleridge, contemplates the results of his labors, they seem almost miraculous. And let me tell you, dear reader, they are almost my only source of hope and consolation in this my proscribed and benighted state. In life, but not living; a man, but incapable of the happiness and pleasures of man. Nothing but darkness and dejection is my lot. Cut off forever, irretrievably cut off, from almost every social enjoyment. If I have a particle of enjoyment, it is very faint and vague; dim as the filmy line that divides me from the world and those in it, and all that enjoy this life. Wretched dejection and despair are mine; my mind a “Stygian cave forlorn,” which breeds “horrid shapes and shrieks and sights unholy.” But it seems the peculiar province of those so happy as to escape this earthly damnation, to deride and blame for want of energy and force the poor victim—perhaps to the crime of some one else,—and nothing but black looks and condemnation from his fellow-man does he receive; he, from whom even the face of hisMaker seems almost turned away, as he winds his weary pilgrimage through a chaos of unutterable woe down to his soon-forgotten grave.
“Here lies one who prostituted every human gift to the use of opium,” is the verdict upon a life of more suffering and more effort, perhaps, than appears in the life of one in ten thousand.
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.
The Delusions and Miseries of the First Stages of Opium Eating.
Fromthe 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.
Great nervousness attends the subsiding of the effect of opium, and one is much torn and distracted in mind. General shakiness ensues. Unreliability of intellect or capacity, owing to the up-hill and down-dale of stimulation and its antitheton, collapse:a result of the tearing of the brain out by the roots, as it were, and the exhaustion and debility consequent.
One is often weighed and found wanting, called upon and not at home, mentally. Great shame and mortification attend this consequence, as one in this nerveless, enfeebled state is morbidly sensitive. Opium usurps the function of nerve, and is nerve in the victim. Without it he is a ship without sails, an engine without steam,—loose, unscrewed, unjointed, powerless. As the effect of opium passes off, a deep feeling of gloom settles upon the heart, such as might follow suddenly and unexpectedly hearing the death-knell of a dear friend. In this condition, at times the most painful, remorseful, despairing thoughts stream in like vultures upon a carcass. One exists either in a sickening, unnatural excitement, or in a gloomy suspension and stagnation of every faculty. One state follows the other in solemn succession, as long as the habit is continued, which is generally until the victim has passed the boundaries of this “breathing world,” and the gates of death are closed and forever barred behind him; or until he becomes a tough, seasoned, and dried-out opium eater, when the drug no longer has the power to stimulate him.
Could one go into the habit of taking opium fully advised as to its various effects and results, he might avoid a great deal of inconvenience and suffering usually entailed upon the novice.
In my own case, knowing nothing of the peculiar secondary effects of opium upon the physical system, I paid the penalty of my ignorance in continual derangements and distress in my stomach and bowels. Not knowing when or how to take it to the best advantage, constantly threw me into spells of indigestion, loss of appetite, and diarrhœa; also constipation and distress in the epigastrium. I was taking morphia for the headache, and if the intermission “in this kind” were prolonged beyond a certain time, the result was diarrhœa, and a general confounding of the entire stomachic apparatus. I did not then observe myself so closely as I have learned to do since, or I should have noticed the conjunction of circumstances that caused this derangement. Had I taken the morphia at proper intervals, this would not have occurred; but I was not aware of that fact, and did not become acquainted with it until months after, when I consulted a physician, on the eve of making an attempt to renounce the habit. Allowing too long a period of time to elapse between doses, threw me into this disorder; additional distress and inconvenience were incurred by taking the drug at the wrong time in the day, and at an improper distance from meals. As to the dose, I have nothing to say. How much better or worse I may have felt, taking a different quantity as a dose, I cannot imagine. I can only speak of what I finally observed and learned after reploughed,resowed, and rereaped experience. Allowing too long a time to elapse between doses, occasioned loss of appetite, disorganized the stomach, and prevented digestion; and taking the drug at the wrong time in the day, and at an improper distance from a meal, constipated me, and gave me distress in the epigastrium.
This distress in the epigastrium was terrible on the nervous system, and rendered the mind almost impotent and powerless for the time it lasted. Likewise, taking the medicine at wrong times, would sometimes cause my food to lodge in me whilst passing through my intestines. This was one of the most potent causes of misery with which it was my unfortunate lot to be afflicted. My food would frequently be arrested in the lower bowels, where it would seem determined to abide with me forever, cutting me like a sharp-cornered stone, rendering me almost wild with nervous distress, and almost entirely dethroning my mind for the time being. It was a perfect hell-rack, and sometimes lasted for days. I could do but little during these spells, and that little not well, having no command over my nervous system. They generally left me relaxed and exhausted. A prolonged series of attacks of this kind so impaired my mind, that it required considerable time thereafter to recover. These attacks came the nearest realizing the torments of hell upon earth, complete, unabrogated, or unabridged, of anything I ever suffered.
When stimulated by morphia taken by the hypodermic syringe, unless I would continue reading, with my mind concentrated, I soon got into a state of mental distraction. Loss of sleep at night comes in at about this point. This punishment for outraging the laws of nature by the use of opium began to scourge me after I had quit taking it hypodermically, and had commenced taking it daily and by the mouth.[3]Any one who has suffered much from the terrors of sleeplessness—inability to sleep at night—can understand and appreciate my condition during this time.
Loss of sleep, and getting physically out of order incessantly through my ignorance of the secondary effects of opium, and from the effects thereof which no foreknowledge could have avoided, kept me in a state of mind bordering on that of Phlegyas in ancient mythology, who was punished by having an immense stone suspended over his head, which perpetually threatened to fall and crush him. I dreaded the advent of each new day, not knowing what agony or discomfiture it had in store for me.
I neglected to mention in the proper place that which, perhaps, is too much of a truism to be referredto at all,—that, as far as a person’s nerves and spirits are concerned, the farther away he is from a dose of opium, the better he feels in this respect, no matter what inconvenience he may undergo in others. I mean, the longer time he allows to elapse between doses, the more cheerful and less shaky he will feel. In the prostration that ensues after the relaxation of stimulation, one is truly and indeed miserable in every respect, and goes down into the very depths of despondency and gloom. The period I refer to now is, when nature has reascended from the dismal realms of “Cerberus and blackest midnight,” and has recovered somewhat from the baleful and crucifying effects of opium; in fact, when the effect of the drug has passed out of the system for the time. Nature commences to assert herself, and would fully recover her wonted vigor and spirit, did not the drug-damned victim resume again the hell-invented curse. The diarrhœa and other inconveniences and disorders in the stomach and bowels that now set in, are simply the result of nature’s effort to throw off the hideous fiend poisoning and destroying her very life. And just here is shown what a terrible violation of the laws of nature the habitual use of opium constitutes. Its action I can compare to nothing more justly than to that of a powerful man knocking down a delicate one as fast as he arises; or, to the tempest-tossed sea washing a mariner ashore, who no sooner rises to his feet than he is caught back by the cruel wavesagain, repeating the process until at last, faint and exhausted, his life is quenched in the remorseless flood; or, to the mythological fable of Tityus, who, for having the temerity to insult Diana, was cast into Tartarus: there,
“Two ravenous vultures, furious for their food,Scream o’er the fiend, and riot in his blood;Incessant gore the liver in his breast;The immortal liver grows, and gives the immortal feast.”
Its hatred of the laws of health is undying, and is only equalled by its power and facility of destruction; its cruel, persistent, and merciless warfare on the human system, and its eternal antagonism to, and annihilation of, human happiness.
Latter Stages.—The Opium Appetite.—Circean Power of Opium.—As a Medicine.—Difference between Condition of Victim in Primary and Secondary Stages.
Latter Stages.—The Opium Appetite.—Circean Power of Opium.—As a Medicine.—Difference between Condition of Victim in Primary and Secondary Stages.
I amno physician, and not learned in physiology, therefore I cannot enter into a learned analysis of the opium appetite. Neither have I read any books upon the subject. I know nothing about the matter save from my own observation or experience. But whether I knowwhy thisis true, orthatisso, or not, one fact I am entirely conscious of, and that is, that in this appetite abides the enslaving power of opium. The influences of opium in the latter stages would not have such an attraction for the habituate but that he could easily forego them; but the appetite comes in and makes him feel that hemusthave opium if he has existence, and there is an end to all resistance. Here dwell the Circean spells of opium. Should one become accustomed to large doses, or rather a large quantity per diem, it is almost impossible to induce the mind to take less, for fear of falling to pieces, going into naught, etc. It seems in such a state that existence would be insupportable were a reduction made. An intense fear of beingplunged into an abyss of darkness and despair besets the mind. Hence the opium eater goes on ever increasing until his final doom.
Opium as a medicine is a grand and powerful remedy, and without a substitute, though as imperfectly understood in its complex action and far-reaching consequences by the mass of the medical profession as by the people at large. Its abstruser mysteries and remoter effects are yet to be discovered and developed by the science of physic.
When the true nature of opium becomes generally known (and by the word nature I mean all the possibilities for good and evil embraced in the medical properties of the drug), the poor victim of its terrors will be taken by the hand and sympathized with by his fellow-man, instead of being ostracized from society, and treated with contempt and reprehension, as he now is.
The difference between the condition of the victim in the primary, as contrasted with that in the secondary or advanced stages, consists in this: Of course, it is a self-evident proposition, from the description I have given of the effects of opium, that the longer a human being is subjected to the suffering it inflicts, the worse he will look, feel, and actually be. But to take the same man out of the advanced stages, and compare him with himself in the first stages, there will be found difference enough between the two living testimonies to the power ofopium to interest the investigator, and repay him for the labor required to make the comparison. In the first stages, opium commits its ravages on the human system by expansion and explosion; in the after stages, it does its work by contraction and compression; the weary victim totters beneath a heavy load.
In the first stages he has occasional periods of enjoyment; in the latter he has none; he is so benumbed by opium as to be incapable of enjoyment. Temporary manumission from positive pain or distress only brings out into stronger relief his miserable situation. He sees and feels that he is not happy; cannot be at his best; and yet his sensibilities are so impervious to all deep feeling, that it is impossible for him to give way to the luxury of weeping,—the solace of tears. His heart is as “dry” and as dead “as summer dust.” The same numbness and deadness isolate him from the enjoyment of the society of his fellow-man. He has lost all capacity or capability to enjoy. He likewise has lost all interest in the things in which mankind generally take pleasure. He has lost all power to take interest in them. The world to him is a “sterile promontory,” a “foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.” “Man delights not him.”
In addition to the general deadness of the sensibilities, the buried-alive condition of the victim, he suffers daily misery and sometimes agony from theabnormal condition of the stomach and bowels produced by opium. The stomach is dry and hard,—dead as the rest of the physical man. The least variation in the dose deranges everything, and brings on a horrible indigestion. This, whether the variation be on the side of less or more; each holds in store its peculiar retribution for law violated. Too little may have some appetite (and may not), but no digestion. Too much may have a little appetite, but no digestion. In either case there may be no appetite at all. To subtract a certain quantity would becertainto upset the stomach, both for appetite and digestion. To add a certain quantity, would be to so benumb the stomach as to prevent all appetite, relish, and digestion. In the one case—too little—it is a lack of strength in the stomach; in the other—too much—the organ is already satiated by opium, and desires no food.
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 effectin, 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 thingsdocrawl 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 indulgedthis 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.
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 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.
Theopium 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 hischair, 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.
Note.—Among the ever-living cares and worriments that beset and afflict the much-tortured mind of the opium eater, the dread of being thrown out of employment, with consequent inability to procure opium, is not the least. And it begets a species of slavery at once abject and galling,—galling to the “better part of man,” which it “cows;” and abject, in the perfect fear and sense of helplessness which it creates.The opium eater is not an attractive personage. The appearanceis even worse than the reality. He looks weak and inefficient; the lack-lustre of his eye, the pallor of his face, and theoffishnessof his general expression, are the reverse of fascinating. This he knows, and feels keenly and continually. He feels absolutely dependent, and that, were he thrown out of employment, it might be utterly impossible to obtain another situation, with his tell-tale disadvantages arrayed like open informers against him. This is a contingent and collateral consequence, dependent upon the position in life occupied by the victim; but where the party is poor, though collateral as it were, as I have above said, it is not the least among the ills that afflict the unfortunate opium eater.
Note.—Among the ever-living cares and worriments that beset and afflict the much-tortured mind of the opium eater, the dread of being thrown out of employment, with consequent inability to procure opium, is not the least. And it begets a species of slavery at once abject and galling,—galling to the “better part of man,” which it “cows;” and abject, in the perfect fear and sense of helplessness which it creates.
The opium eater is not an attractive personage. The appearanceis even worse than the reality. He looks weak and inefficient; the lack-lustre of his eye, the pallor of his face, and theoffishnessof his general expression, are the reverse of fascinating. This he knows, and feels keenly and continually. He feels absolutely dependent, and that, were he thrown out of employment, it might be utterly impossible to obtain another situation, with his tell-tale disadvantages arrayed like open informers against him. This is a contingent and collateral consequence, dependent upon the position in life occupied by the victim; but where the party is poor, though collateral as it were, as I have above said, it is not the least among the ills that afflict the unfortunate opium eater.
On Energy and Ambition as Affected by the Opium Habit.
I havedevoted a separate chapter to the discussion of these two qualities, because they are more directly operated upon by the curse of opium than any other of the principles in human nature. Coleridge, “though usually described as doing nothing,—‘an idler,’ ‘a dreamer,’ and by many such epithets,—sent forth works which, though they had cost him years of thought, never brought him any suitable return.” So says Gillman, in his unfinished life of Coleridge. It was so common to charge Coleridge with being constitutionally idle, that he at length came to believe the crime charged to be true, and endeavored to extenuate his offenceand overcome his “inbred sin.” Before he became an opium eater this offence was not charged.
No one then said he lacked energy or perseverance. His poetical works having been composed in his early manhood, would give the lie to this assertion, were it made. It was not until the fountain of his genius was frozen by the withering frosts of opium, that this charge had any foundation, or supposed foundation, in fact. After that time, after being ensnared in the toils of opium, I think it would be absurd to claim that a mere casual observer might not think there was some foundation for the charge that he was “doing nothing,” etc. His way was obstructed by almost impassable barriers. The fangs of the destroyer left wounds which rendered it impossible for him to work with reasonable facility and success at certain times. What he did accomplish is better done than it would have been had he attempted to write when unfit. At times literary labor must have been entirely out of the question; he must have been too ill to attempt it.
To write at any time required tremendous exertion of the will, and a calm resignation to bear any suffering in order to accomplish something.
It is not fair to measure the result of Coleridge’s labors by that of other men. As De Quincey truthfully says, “what he did in spite of opium,” is the question to be considered.
What was true of Coleridge holds good with all subject to the habit, the effect of opium being the same on all.
Opium strikes at the very root of energy, as though it would extirpate that quality altogether. A deadly languor, the opposite of energy, an averseness to activity, pervades the whole system with paralyzing effect. Of course this state of feeling is inimical to the accomplishment of any great ambition. The ambition remains as a quality of remorse, to “prick and sting” one, but the energy to fulfil is frustrated by the enervating spells of opium. That dread inertia known only to opium eaters prevents the doing of everything save that which must be done, that cannot be avoided.
The “potent poison” was never designed for man’s daily use. It is not a thing which the system counteracts by long usage; it is a thing that transforms and deforms the whole physical and mental economy, and the longer its use the more complete the destruction. A man is thrown flat, and instead of a predisposition or a passion to do anything which aids one in the accomplishment of purposes, the whole human nature revolts like a pressed convict; there is no pleasure in the doing or the prospect of doing anything whatever.
No warmth or glow of passion or genial feeling can be aroused. Hence the poetical faculty was annihilated in Coleridge. There is a sort of vitrifyingprocess that chills all sensibility. A man is a stick. To expect that a man could succeed as well under these conditions, even in the little accomplished, is unreasonable.
There are no genial impulses, no strength of fervor, no warmth of feeling of any kind. The man is under a load of poison; the springs of action are clogged with crushing weight. No hope of pleasure in future prospect can excite action. Whatever is done, is done in pale, cold strength of intellect. A man is placed entirely out of sympathy with his fellows or human kind. He cannot judge from his own heart what they would like or prefer. He is as completely cut off and dissevered from the body of mankind, and the interests and feelings of the same, as if he were a visitant from another sphere, and but faintly manifested here. How can he write in this condition? That exquisite feeling that teaches a writer to know when the best word tips the edges of the sensibility, lies buried under thedébrisof dead tissue. It is a “lost art” to him. Although a man longs to do something worthy the praise of men, and although his ambition may be even higher than it otherwise would be, owing to his being able to take no pleasure in minutiæ, and having appreciation only for concrete generalities, he has such a contempt for, and so little pleasure in, the procuring processes, the details of the work, that he is overwhelmed with disgust before making an effort.
No interest in anything of human production, renders him primarily unable and unfit for the details necessary to be gone through with in the achievement of any great purpose. The pangs of disappointment he feels as deeply as any one. He becomes morbidly sorrowful over his lack of success, his inability to do anything. Unlike Coleridge, but like De Quincey, he may have gotten into the power of opium while his mind was yet undeveloped and immature, thus being deprived of the possibility of enjoying that “blessed interval” which was given to Coleridge, and to which he alludes with such thankfulness. As to poetry, in Coleridge’s case, the beautiful language of Keats was fulfilled:
“As though a rose should shut and be a bud again.”
In the case of De Quincey, cruel winter came on and nipped the flower in the bud ere yet it had time to bloom, so that when it came to flower forth, in a later season, it was found that the stalk itself had been stunted in its growth, and the beauty of the flower impaired. He may have been afflicted with sickness in his early youth which prevented the development of his mind, the pain of which threw him into opium, as in my own case. He may have in this state felt the “stirrings” of genius, without the power of expression, and when at length his pain was so relieved, and his strength so increased, as to allow him to attempt something, the withering blightof opium had blasted his perceptions, exterminated his feelings, and enfeebled his intellect. Verily, the lines of Byron apply with special significance to the state of the opium eater:
“We wither from our youth, we gasp away—Sick—sick; unfound the boon—unslaked the thirst,Though to the last, in verge of our decay,Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first—But all too late,—so we are doubly curst.”
If anything whatever is done, it must be done through suffering, and by herculean efforts to overcome the distaste and disgust that assail one. It is all against the tide. There is no current to move with. Everything original seems contemptible, at least of little weight; and although he can judge the works of others correctly, they excite but faint interest. But the sickening weight that overpowers one and holds him back, like the hand of a strong man, is the greatest obstacle. He might ignore his lack of interest. A man in health warms with his subject, and takes great pleasure in it. The opium eater remains passive and the same all the way along, and ends feeling that he has not done justice to his natural ability, and chafes with grief, disappointment, and despair at his confined and weakened powers. As a structure, he is riddled “from turret to foundation-stone.” To expect as much from a man in this condition as from one in the healthful enjoyment of allhis faculties, shocks the sense of justice,—it is “to reason most absurd.” Would you expect grapes from a hyperborean iceberg?—figs from the Sahara?—palms from Siberia? Would you compare the fettered African with the roving Arabian?—the bond to the free? In sober practice, would you say to the blind, “Copy this writing?”—to the palsied, “Run you this errand,”—to the sick in bed, “Arise, and write a book?” Would you do this? You say it is ridiculous. So was it ridiculous, so was it wrong, to expect from Coleridge constant writing, and more than he accomplished. Why, the human face itself tells the story in a word. Thefaceremains, but the countenance, the expression and divine resemblance, are erased and stricken off. So the body remains, but like a blasted oak, whose hollow trunk contains no sap, and whose withered branches are barren. Coleridge did well,—he did nobly,—and left a legacy the value of which will yet be learned to man’s everlasting gain.
Numbered with the saints in heaven is the sweet-minded, long-suffering Coleridge. Oh, venerated shade! thy spirit living yet upon the earth has kept mine company in this sad ebb and flow of time. Thy nature, so gentle, so tender, and so true; thy heart so pure; thy whole being so perfect and so high, hath been a lighted torch to me in this my dark estate, travelling up the rugged hill of time, and rolling my stone along; hath been balm to mywounds, wine to my spirit, and hope to my o’er-freighted heart! To know thee as thou wert, my own kindred suffering tearing all prejudice away, is at least one solace ungiven the world at large. Thou hast borne thy part and won thy crown; may the humblest of thy friends join thee at last in the realms of peace!