The Opium Habit by Horace B. Day

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THE OPIUM HABIT,

WITH

SUGGESTIONS AS TO THE REMEDY.

"After my death, I earnestly entreat that a full and unqualified
narrative of my wretchedness, and of its guilty cause, may be made
public, that at least some little good may be effected by the direful
example."--COLERIDGE.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

A SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT TO ABANDON OPIUM

DE QUINCEY'S "CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER"

OPIUM REMINISCENCES OF COLERIDGE

WILLIAM BLAIR

OPIUM AND ALCOHOL COMPARED

INSANITY AND SUICIDE FROM AN ATTEMPT TO ABANDON MORPHINE

A MORPHINE HABIT OVERCOME

ROBERT HALL--JOHN RANDOLPH--WILLIAM WILBERFORCE

WHAT SHALL THEY DO TO BE SAVED?

OUTLINES OF THE OPIUM-CURE

INTRODUCTION.

This volume has been compiled chiefly for the benefit of
opium-eaters. Its subject is one indeed which might be made alike
attractive to medical men who have a fancy for books that are
professional only in an accidental way; to general readers who would
like to see gathered into a single volume the scattered records of the
consequences attendant upon the indulgence of a pernicious habit; and
to moralists and philanthropists to whom its sad stories of infirmity
and suffering might be suggestive of new themes and new objects upon
which to bestow their reflections or their sympathies. But for none
of these classes of readers has the book been prepared. In strictness
of language little medical information is communicated by it.
Incidentally, indeed, facts are stated which a thoughtful physician
may easily turn to professional account. The literary man will
naturally feel how much more attractive the book might have been made
had these separate and sometimes disjoined threads of mournful
personal histories been woven into a more coherent whole; but the book
has not been made for literary men. The philanthropist, whether a
theoretical or a practical one, will find in its pages little
preaching after his particular vein, either upon the vice or the
danger of opium-eating. Possibly, as he peruses these various records,
he may do much preaching for himself, but he will not find a great
deal furnished to his hand, always excepting the rather inopportune
reflections of Mr. Joseph Cottle over the case of his unhappy friend
Coleridge. The book has been compiled for opium-eaters, and to their
notice it is urgently commended. Sufferers from protracted and
apparently hopeless disorders profit little by scientific information
as to the nature of their complaints, yet they listen with profound
interest to the experience of fellow-sufferers, even when this
experience is unprofessionally and unconnectedly told. Medical
empirics understand this and profit by it. In place of the general
statements of the educated practitioner of medicine, the empiric
encourages the drooping hopes of his patient by narrating in detail
the minute particulars of analagous cases in which his skill has
brought relief.

Before the victim of opium-eating is prepared for the services of an
intelligent physician he requires some stimulus to rouse him to the
possibility of recovery. It is not the _dicta_ of the medical
man, but the experience of the relieved patient, that the opium-eater,
desiring--nobody but he knows how ardently--to enter again into the
world of hope, needs, to quicken his paralyzed will in the direction
of one tremendous effort for escape from the thick night that blackens
around him. The confirmed opium-eater is habitually hopeless. His
attempts at reformation have been repeated again and again; his
failures have been as frequent as his attempts. He sees nothing before
him but irremediable ruin. Under such circumstances of helpless
depression, the following narratives from fellow-sufferers and
fellow-victims will appeal to whatever remains of his hopeful nature,
with the assurance that others who have suffered even as he has
suffered, and who have struggled as he has struggled, and have failed
again and again as he has failed, have at length escaped the
destruction which in his own case he has regarded as inevitable.

The number of confirmed opium-eaters in the United States is large,
not less, judging from the testimony of druggists in all parts of the
country as well as from other sources, than eighty to a hundred
thousand. The reader may ask who make up this unfortunate class, and
under what circumstances did they become enthralled by such a habit?
Neither the business nor the laboring classes of the country
contribute very largely to the number. Professional and literary men,
persons suffering from protracted nervous disorders, women obliged by
their necessities to work beyond their strength, prostitutes, and, in
brief, all classes whose business or whose vices make special demands
upon the nervous system, are those who for the most part compose the
fraternity of opium-eaters. The events of the last few years have
unquestionably added greatly to their number. Maimed and shattered
survivors from a hundred battle-fields, diseased and disabled soldiers
released from hostile prisons, anguished and hopeless wives and
mothers, made so by the slaughter of those who were dearest to them,
have found, many of them, temporary relief from their sufferings in
opium.

There are two temperaments in respect to this drug. With persons whom
opium violently constricts, or in whom it excites nausea, there is
little danger that its use will degenerate into a habit. Those,
however, over whose nerves it spreads only a delightful calm, whose
feelings it tranquillizes, and in whom it produces an habitual state
of reverie, are those who should be upon their guard lest the drug to
which in suffering they owe so much should become in time the direst
of curses. Persons of the first description need little caution, for
they are rarely injured by opium. Those of the latter class, who have
already become enslaved by the habit, will find many things in these
pages that are in harmony with their own experience; other things they
will doubtless find of which they have had no experience. Many of the
particular effects of opium differ according to the different
constitutions of those who use it. In De Quincey it exhibited its
power in gorgeous dreams in consequence of some special tendency in
that direction in De Quincey's temperament, and not because dreaming
is by any means an invariable attendant upon opium-eating. Different
races also seem to be differently affected by its use. It seldom,
perhaps never, intoxicates the European; it seems habitually to
intoxicate the Oriental. It does not generally distort the person of
the English or American opium-eater; in the East it is represented as
frequently producing this effect.

It is doubtful whether a sufficient number of cases of excess in
opium-eating or of recovery from the habit have yet been recorded, or
whether such as have been recorded have been so collated as to warrant
a positive statement as to all the phenomena attendant upon its use or
its abandonment. A competent medical man, uniting a thorough
knowledge of his profession with educated habits of generalizing
specific facts under such laws--affecting the nervous, digestive, or
secretory system--as are recognized by medical science, might render
good service to humanity by teaching us properly to discriminate in
such cases between what is uniform and what is accidental. In the
absence, however, of such instruction, these imperfect, and in some
cases fragmentary, records of the experience of opium-eaters are
given, chiefly in the language of the sufferers themselves, that the
opium-eating reader may compare case with case, and deduce from such
comparison the lesson of the entire practicability of his own release
from what has been the burden and the curse of his existence. The
entire object of the compilation will have been attained, if the
narratives given in these pages shall be found to serve the double
purpose of indicating to the beginner in opium-eating the hazardous
path he is treading, and of awakening in the confirmed victim of the
habit the hope that he may be released from the frightful thraldom
which has so long held him, infirm in body, imbecile in will,
despairing in the present, and full of direful foreboding for the
future.

In giving the subjoined narratives of the experience of opium-eaters,
the compiler has been sorely tempted to weave them into a more
coherent and connected story; but he has been restrained by the
conviction that the thousands of opium-eaters, whose relief has been
his main object in preparing the volume, will be more benefited by
allowing each sufferer to tell his own story than by any attempt on
his part to generalize the multifarious and often discordant phenomena
attendant upon the disuse of opium. As yet the medical profession are
by no means agreed as to the character or proper treatment of the
opium disease. While medical science remains in this state, it would
be impertinent in any but a professional person to attempt much more
than a statement of his own case, with such general advice as would
naturally occur to any intelligent sufferer. Very recently indeed,
some suggestions for the more successful treatment of the habit have
been discussed both by eminent medical men and by distinguished
philanthropists. Could an Institution for this purpose be established,
the chief difficulty in the way of the redemption of unhappy thousands
would be obviated. The general outline of such a plan will be found
at the close of the volume. It seems eminently deserving the profound
consideration of all who devote themselves to the promotion of public
morals or the alleviation of individual suffering.

THE OPIUM HABIT.

A SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT TO ABANDON OPIUM.

In the personal history of many, perhaps of most, men, some particular
event or series of events, some special concurrence of circumstances,
or some peculiarity of habit or thought, has been so unmistakably
interwoven and identified with their general experience of life as to
leave no doubt in the mind of any one of the decisive influence which
such causes have exerted. Unexaggerated narrations of marked cases of
this kind, while adding something to our knowledge of the marvellous
diversities of temptation and trial, of success and disappointment
which make up the story of human life, are not without a direct value,
as furnishing suggestions or cautions to those who may be placed in
like circumstances or assailed by like temptations.

The only apology which seems to be needed for calling the attention of
the reader to the details which follow of a violent but successful
struggle with the most inveterate of all habits, is to be found in the
hope which the writer indulges, that while contributing something to
the current amount of knowledge as to the horrors attending the
habitual use of opium, the story may not fail to encourage some who
now regard themselves as hopeless victims of its power to a strenuous
and even desperate effort for recovery. Possibly the narrative may
also not be without use to those who are now merely in danger of
becoming enslaved by opium, but who may be wise enough to profit in
time by the experience of another.

A man who has eaten much more than half a hundredweight of opium,
equivalent to more than a hogshead of laudanum, who has taken enough
of this poison to destroy many thousand human lives, and whose
uninterrupted use of it continued for nearly fifteen years, ought to
be able to say something as to the good and the evil there is in the
habit. It forms, however, no part of my purpose to do this, nor to
enter into any detailed statement of the circumstances under which the
habit was formed. I neither wish to diminish my own sense of the evil
of such want of firmness as characterizes all who allow themselves to
be betrayed into the use of a drug which possesses such power of
tyrannizing over the most resolute will, nor to withdraw the attention
of the reader from the direct lesson this record is designed to convey,
by saying any thing that shall seem to challenge his sympathy or
forestall his censures. It may, however, be of service to other
opium-eaters for me to State briefly, that while endowed in most
respects with uncommon vigor of any tendency to despondency or
hypochondria, an unusual nervous sensibilitv, together with a
constitutional tendency to a disordered condition of the digestive
organs, strongly predisposed me to accept the fascination of the opium
habit. The difficulty, early in life, of retaining food of any kind
upon the stomach was soon followed by vagrant shooting pains over the
body, which at a later day assumed a permanant chronic form.

After other remedies had failed, the eminent physician under whose
advice I was acting recommended opium. I have no doubt he acted both
wisely and professionally in the prescription he ordered, but where is
the patient who has learned the secret of substituting luxurious
enjoyment in place of acute pain by day and restless hours by night,
that can be trusted to take a correct measure of his own necessities?
The result was as might have been anticipated: opium after a few
months' use became indispensable. With the full consciousness that
such was the case, came the resolution to break off the habit This was
accomplished after an effort no more earnest than is within the power
of almost any one to make. A recurrence of suffering more than usually
severe led to a recourse to the same remedy, but in largely increased
quantities. After a year or two's use the habit was a second time
broken by another effort much more protracted and obstinate than the
first. Nights made weary and days uncomfortable by pain once more
suggested the same unhappy refuge, and after a struggle against the
supposed necessity, which I now regard as half-hearted and cowardly,
the habit was resumed, and owing to the peculiarly unfavorable state
of the weather at the time, the quantity of opium necessary to
alleviate pain and secure sleep was greater than ever. The habit of
relying upon large doses is easily established; and, once formed, the
daily quantity is not easily reduced. All persons who have long been
accustomed to Opium are aware that there is a _maximum_ beyond
which no increase in quantity does much in the further alleviation of
pain or in promoting increased pleasurable excitement. This maximum
in my own case was eighty grains, or two thousand drops of laudanum,
which was soon attained, and was continued, with occasional
exceptions, sometimes dropping below and sometimes largely rising
above this amount, down to the period when the habit was finally
abandoned. I will not speak of the repeated efforts that were made
during these long years to relinquish the drug. They all failed,
either through the want of sufficient firmness of purpose, or from the
absence of sufficient bodily health to undergo the suffering incident
to the effort, or from unfavorable circumstances of occupation or
situation which gave me no adequate leisure to insure their
success. At length resolve upon a final effort to emancipate myself
from the habit.

For two or three years previous to this time my general health had
been gradually improving. Neuralgic disturbance was of less frequent
occurrence and was less intense, the stomach retained its food, and,
what was of more consequence, the difficulty of securing a reasonable
amount of sleep had for the most part passed away. Instead of a
succession of wakeful nights any serioious interruption of habitual
rest occurred at infrequent intervals, and was usually limited to a
single night.

In addition to these hopeful indications in encouragement of a
vigorous effort to abandon the habit, there were on the other hand
certain warnings which could not safely be neglected. The stomach
began to complain,--as well it might after so many years unnatural
service,--that the daily task of disposing of a large mass of noxious
matter constantly cumulating its deadly assaults upon the natural
processes of life was getting to be beyond its powers. The pulse had
become increasingly languid, while the aversion to labor of any kind
seemed to be settling down into a chronic and hopeless infirmity. Some
circumstances connected with my own situation pointed also to the
appropriateness of the present time for an effort which I knew by the
experience of others would make a heavy demand upon all one's
fortitude, even when these circumstances were most propitious. At this
period my time was wholly at my own disposal. My family was a small
one, and I was sure of every accessory support I might need from them
to tide me over what I hoped would prove only a temporary, though it
might be a severe, struggle. The house I occupied was fortunately so
situated that no outcry of pain, nor any extorted eccentricity of
conduct, consequent upon the effort I proposed to make, could be
observed by neighbors or by-passers.

A few days before the task was commenced, and while on a visit to the
capital of a neighboring State in company with a party of gentlemen
from Baltimore, I had ventured upon reducing by one-quarter the
customary daily allowance of eighty grains. Under the excitement of
such an occasion I continued the experiment for a second day with no
other perceptible effect than a restless indisposition to remain long
in the same position. This, however, was a mere experiment, a prelude
to the determined struggle I was resolved upon making, and to which I
had been incited chiefly through the encouragement suggested by the
success of De Quincey. There is a page in the "Confessions" of this
author which I have no doubt has, been perused with intense interest
by hundreds of opium-eaters. It is the page which gives in a tabular
form the gradual progress he made in diminishing the daily quantity of
laudanum to which he had long been accustomed. I had read and re-read
with great care all that he had seen fit to record respecting his own
triumph over the habit. I knew that he had made use of opium
irregularly and at considerable intervals from the year 1804 to 1812,
and that during this time opium had not become a daily necessity; that
in the year 1813 he had become a confirmed opium-eater, "of whom to
ask whether on any particular day he had or had not taken opium, would
be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration, or the heart
fulfilled its functions;" that in the year 1821 he had published his
"Confessions," in which, while leading the unobservant reader to think
that he had mastered the habit, he had in truth only so far succeeded
as to reduce his daily allowance from a quantity varying from fifty or
sixty to one hundred and fifty grains, down to one varying from seven
to twelve grains; that in the year 1822 an appendix was added to the
"Confessions" which contained a tabular statement of his further
progress toward an absolute abandonment of the drug, and indicating
his gradual descent, day by day, for thirty-five days, when the reader
is naturally led to suppose that the experiment was triumphantly
closed by his entire disuse of opium.

I had failed, however, to observe that a few pages preceding this
detailed statement the writer had given a faint intimation that the
experiment had been a more protracted one than was indicated by the
table. I had also failed to notice the fact that no real progress had
been made during the first four weeks of the attempt: the average
quantity of laudanum daily consumed for the first week being one
hundred and three drops; of the second, eighty-four drops; of the
third, one hundred and forty-two drops; and of the fourth, one hundred
and thirty-eight drops; and that in the fifth week the self-denial of
more than three days had been rewarded with the indulgence of three
hundred drops on the fourth. A careful comparison of this kind,
showing that in an entire month the average of the first week had been
but one hundred and three drops, while the average of the last had
been one hundred and thirty-eight drops, and that in the fifth week a
frantic effort to abstain wholly for three days had obliged him to use
on the fourth more than double the quantity to which of late he had
been accustomed, would have prevented the incautious conclusion,
suggested by his table, that De Quincey made use of laudanum but on
two occasions after the expiration of the fourth week.

Whatever may have been the length of time taken by De Quincey "in
unwinding to its last link the chain which bound" him, it is certain
we have no means of knowing it from any thing he has recorded. Be it
shorter or longer, his failure to state definitely the entire time
employed in his experiment occasioned me much and needless
suffering. I thought that if another could descend, without the
experience of greater misery than De Quincey records, from one hundred
and thirty drops of laudanum, equivalent to about five grains of
opium, to nothing, in thirty-four or five days, and in this brief
period abandon a habit of more than nine years' growth, a more
resolved will might achieve the same result in the same number of
days, though the starting-point in respect to aggregate quantity and
to length of use was much greater. The object, therefore, to be
accomplished in my own case was to part company forever with opium in
thirty-five days, cost what suffering it might. On the 26th of
November, in a half-desperate, half-despondent temper of mind, I
commenced the long-descending _gradus_ which I had rapidly
ascended so many years before. During this entire period the quantity
consumed had been pretty uniformly eighty grains of best Turkey opium
daily. Occasional attempts to diminish the quantity, but of no long
continuance, and occasional overindulgence during protracted bad
weather, furnished the only exceptions to the general uniformity of
the habit.

The experiment was commenced by a reduction the first day from eighty
grains to sixty, with no very marked change of sensations; the second
day the allowance was fifty grains, with an observable tendency toward
restlessness, and a general uneasiness; the third day a further
reduction of ten grains had diminished the usual allowance by
one-half, but with a perceptible increase in the sense of physical
discomfort. The mental emotions, however, were entirely jubilant The
prevailing feeling was one of hopeful exultation. The necessity for
eighty grains daily had been reduced to a necessity for only forty,
and, therefore, one-half of the dreaded task seemed accomplished. It
was a great triumph, and the remaining forty grains were a mere
_bagatelle_, to be disposed of with the same serene self-control
that the first had been. A weight of brooding melancholy was lifted
from the spirits: the world wore a happier look. The only drawback to
this beatific state of mind was a marked indisposition to remain
quiet, and a restless aversion to giving attention to the most
necessary duties.

Two days more and I had come down to twenty-five grains. Matters now
began to look a good deal more serious. Only fifteen of the last forty
grains had been dispensed with; but this gain had cost a furious
conflict. A strange compression and constriction of the stomach, sharp
pains like the stab of a knife beneath the shoulder-blades, perpetual
restlessness, an apparent prolongation of time, so much so that it
seemed the day would never come to a close, an incapacity of fixing
the attention upon any subject whatever, wandering pains over the
whole body, the jaw, whenever moved, making a loud noise, constant
iritability of mind and increased sensibility to cold, with
alternations of hot flushes, were some of the phenomena which
manifested themselves at this stage of the process. The mental
elations of the first three days had become changed by the fifth into
a state of high nervous excitement; so that while on the whole there
was a prevailing hopefulness of temper, and even some remaining
buoyancy of spirits, arising chiefly from the certainty that already
the quantity consumed had been reduced by more than two-thirds, the
conviction had, nevertheless, greatly deepened, that the task was like
to prove a much more serious one than I had anticipated. Whether it
was possible at present to carry the descent much further had become a
grave question. The next day, however, a reduction of five grains was
somehow attained; but it was a hard fight to hold my own within this
limit of twenty grains. From this stage commenced the really
intolerable part of the experience of an opium-eater retiring from
service. During a single week, three-quarters of the daily allowance
had been relinquished, and in this fact, at least, there was some
ground for exultation. If what had been gained could only be secured
beyond any peradventure of relapse, so far a positive success would be
achieved.

Had the experiment stopped here for a time until the system had become
in some measure accustomed to its new habits, possibly the misery I
subsequently underwent might some of it have been spared me. However
this may be, I had not the patience of mind necessary for a protracted
experiment. What I did must be done at once; if I would win I must
fight for it, and must find the incentive to courage in the conscious
desperation of the contest.

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