The Opium Habit by Horace B. Day

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He came to me, finally, on the first day of January, 1868, saying his
people had kindly granted him leave of absence for a few weeks, which
he would devote to the work of overcoming his enemy, if such a thing
were possible. He could not live in his bondage. His wretched life,
with its terrible end, was forever staring him in the face. He asked
me if I would receive him at my house, and take care of him during the
struggle, as I had once consented to do. I said I would if he would
consent to let the people know why he was there. He looked very sad
as he answered that it would not do. He must undertake the battle at
home. He then took from his pocket some papers of morphine, which he
had caused to be weighed in doses diminishing at the rate of half a
grain each, beginning with six grains for the first day, five and a
half for the next, and so on, down. This was a sudden falling off of
nearly two-thirds from his ordinary allowance. He gave me all but the
two largest powders, which he reserved for an absence of two days at
Columbus. He proposed going away for the purpose of coming home sick,
in which condition he well knew he should be at that time. I was to
call at his house on the evening of his return, to render such
assistance as his condition might demand.

I went at the time appointed and found him again shattered, trembling,
sweating, and hovering about the fire. He said he had slept none, was
suffering much, and that his knees especially were aching badly. He
called pleadingly for the amount of morphine prepared for that day, as
he had not taken it. It was given, and then he conversed freely for an
hour or so.

The next evening he proposed to reduce his morphine by two grains
instead of half a grain, but was in a hurry for the quantity he was to
have. In the course of over two days more he came down to about two
grains for the whole day. But one evening, when I found him
apparently much relieved from suffering, and he saw my look of wonder
and doubt, he confessed having broken over the rules by taking an
additional dose of about three grains on his own responsibility. He
said his diarrhea had returned, the medicine left to check it was
gone, he hated to send for me, and so had done it. He was full of
remorse, declaring that if I should now abandon him, he would not
blame me. I told him I should stick to him as long as he would let me;
that he was doing a great work, such as few men ever succeeded in--a
work for two worlds, this one and the next--and that he must not give
it up.

I continued to spend the evenings with him for about two weeks. The
morphine was reduced to something like one grain a day, his appetite
returned, and he began to sleep pretty well at night. His nerves
became steady, and his diarrhea was controlled without serious
difficulty. Energy and strength returned so rapidly that in about two
weeks he was ready to resume his work. He said to his wife that the
awful weight was all gone--all gone. He expressed his gratitude to me
in the most glowing terms. He was triumphant at the idea of having
conquered with so much less suffering than he expected. Alas! I knew
his danger, and saw with sorrow that his returning confidence was
removing him from under my control while yet the enemy remained in the
field.

His last visit to me was on Friday, January 17th. He wanted diarrhea
medicine enough to last till the next Tuesday, when he would call
again and report. I felt uneasy about him, and went to hear him preach
on the intervening Sunday evening. I saw by his flushed and
embarrassed manner that he was falling back, and have since learned
that after service he confessed to his wife, who was watching his
condition with keen eyes, that he had taken about three grains to
strengthen him for the occasion. Poor man! He doubtless thought he
could stop there. Tuesday came, but he came not to my office.
Wednesday, and he came not. Then I was called away from home and did
not return until late Saturday night. The first news which greeted me
on arriving was, that he was no more. He had been buying morphine at
the drug-store during the week, and had reached nearly his former
quantity. He had wandered about, uncertain, forlorn, desolate. On
Friday he had tried to borrow a gun to shoot rats, had come across the
way to my office, which was found closed, and then tried again to
borrow the gun. He told his wife that dreadful load had come back.
Saturday his Quarterly Meeting commenced. He was to preach in the
afternoon. He was exceedingly kind and helpful to his family at
dinner-time, as he had been all day. The people were assembling at the
church, not far off. He went to the barn, suspended a rope from a beam
overhead, as he stood upon the manger. It was not quite long
enough. He lengthened it with his pocket-handkerchief, looped it
around his neck, put his hands in his pockets, and leaped off.

He was gone forever. He had failed in his last attempt to break away
from the benumbing power of opium, and in his desperation had sought
freedom in death. Let no man judge him, and least of all those who are
strangers to the fascinating and infernal strength of his enemy. You
may call it a grave mistake, a dreadful blunder, a doleful insanity,
but do not assume to put him beyond the reach of mercy, or to decide
that his lamentable end was not the iron door through which he may
have passed to the city of the golden streets.

A newspaper account of the death of Mr. Brush having fallen under the
notice of a morphine sufferer in Wisconsin, the latter addressed a
letter to Dr. Barnes, in which he gives his own remarkable experience
in the immediate and absolute abandonment of the habit.

The writer is represented as being about fifty years of age, temperate
in his general habits, and though not possessed of great vigor of
constitution, as having been through life a hard-working man. His use
of morphine began in the year 1861, under a medical prescription for
the relief of general debility; but without any knowledge on his part
of the character of the remedy he was using. After six months
habituation, the attempt to relinquish it proved a failure. For the
first two years, morphine appeared to benefit him. At the expiration
of this time his daily allowance had become three grains, which
quantity was rarely exceeded during the four subsequent years of his
bondage. After narrating the mental and physical suffering he
underwent in these years, he says:

April 17, 1867, found me a poor, wasted, miserable, six years'
morphine-eater; health all gone; unable to do any sort of business;
desiring nothing but death to close my sufferings. Then I made up my
mind to stop the use of morphine all at once. I had previously
attempted to break off by degrees, but I was beaten at that game every
time. It is utterly impossible to taper off by less and less, unless
some one is over the patient watching every motion. I say it
understandingly--the will of no man is strong enough to handle the
poison for himself. He will make a virtue out of necessity, and for
this time will over-take.

So I resolved to quit at once and forever. I arranged my business as
far as I could, under the idea that I should die in the attempt. The
first forty-eight hours I slept most of the time, waking somewhat
often, however, and then dropping asleep, while a sort of nervous
twitching would come and go. But the next day found me wide
awake. And--shall I tell you?--there was no more sleep for me until
sixty-five days had passed. No, not one single moment for sixty-five
days and nights. I was fully awake--never slept one moment! The second
day my suffering was intense. Every nerve seemed to be on a
rampage. Every faculty, mental and physical, appeared to be striving
to see how much suffering I could stand. The third day my bowels began
to empty, and a river of old fotid matter ran away. It seemed that I
was passing off in corruption. This continued for nearly four long,
suffering weeks. I never checked it, but let Nature take her course.

During the first four weeks of the fight there was extreme pain in
every part of my body. It seemed to me that I should burn up. This
worse than death sensation never left me a single hour for the first
thirty-five days. It seemed at times as though my bones would burst
open: a sort of nerve fire seemed to be shut up in them which must be
let out. I was able to walk out, and if necessary could walk a mile or
more.

The fifty-sixth day of suffering without sleep found me at a Water
Cure. Warm baths, sometimes with battery, then packs, then sitz baths,
for ten more long, suffering days and nights--but sleep never came to
me and pain never left me. On the sixty-fifth day of the fight I felt
perfectly easy. All my pains were gone. I went to my room and slept
nearly four hours. For ten minutes after waking I never stirred a limb
or muscle, fearing it would bring back the pains. But a happier man
never woke from sleep. I saw that I was delivered from the
prison-house of death. I telegraphed to my family that sleep had
come. To niy dying-hour I shall ever remember that eventful day. But
it was only the glimmering of light. Gradually and slowly sleep came
to be my companion again. And even yet it has not fully come. Until
within the last twenty days when I awoke, every nerve, every emotion
was awake all at once.

It is now the tenth month since I quit morphine. Then my weight was
only one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Now it is one hundred and
ninety. I am the happiest man on the earth, I am redeemed from one of
the lowest hells in all worlds.

In a subsequent letter to Dr. Barnes the writer says: "My health still
improves. There is one peculiarity about my will-power; it is so
vacillating, not reliable and firm as before. Still I feel that it
will come back."

The following declaration, which Dr. Barnes embodies in his article,
is deserving the careful consideration both of physicians and
philanthropists. He says: "Calling to mind what has come to my
knowledge during a long and extensive medical practice, the conclusion
is, that I have known of more deaths from the use of opium, in some of
its forms, than from all the forms of alcoholic drinks."

A MORPHINE HABIT OVERCOME.

The following record of a successful endeavor to overcome a morphine
habit of several years' growth is abbreviated, by permission of the
publishers, from _Lippincott's Magazine_ for April, 1868. The
absence of the writer in Europe precludes any more definite statement
than can be inferred from the narrative itself as to the length of
time during which the habit remained uninterrupted. This is a matter
of regret, as the _time-element_, in the view of the compiler,
enters so largely into the question of the probable recovery of an
opium sufferer. Morphine appears certainly to have been taken daily in
very large quantities for at least five years after the writer's habit
became established.

* * * * *

Since De Quincey gave to the world his famous "Confessions," people
have been content to regard opium-eating as a strangely fascinating or
as a strangely horrible vice. England, and, as I have recently
learned, in this country also. It should be well understood that no
man _continues_ an opium-eater from choice; he sooner or later
becomes the veriest slave; and it is the object of this paper,
originally intended for a friend's hand only, to deter intending
neophytes--to warn them from submitting themselves to a yoke which
will bow them to the earth. In the hope that it may subserve the good
proposed, I venture to give a short account of the experiences of one
who still feels in his tissues the yet slowly-smouldering fire of the
furnace through which he has passed. I first took opium, in the form
of laudanum, nearly ten years ago, for insomnia, or sleeplessness,
brought on by overwork at a European university. It seemed as if my
tissues lapped up the drug and revelled in the new and strange delight
which had opened up to them. All that winter I took doses of from ten
to thirty drops every Friday night, there being but few classes on
Saturday of any consequence, so that I had the full, uninterrupted
effect of the drug. Then I could set to work with unparalleled
energy. Thought upon thought flowed to me in never-ending waves. I had
a mad striving after intellectual distinction, and felt I would pay
any price for it. I generally felt, on the Sunday, my lids slightly
heavy, but with a sense pervading me of one who had been taking
champagne. I never, however, during this whole winter, took more than
one dose a week, varying from thirty to sixty drops. Toward the close
of the session I one day deferred the dose till Sunday evening. On the
Monday following, in the afternoon, I was in one of the class-rooms
listening to the lecturer on Belles-lettres and Rhetoric. One hundred
and more young men sat, on that Monday afternoon, listening to his
silvery voice as he read extracts from Falconer's "Shipwreck," while
the splendid conceptions of the poem, and the opium to boot, taken on
the Sunday evening before, were all doing their work on an imaginative
young man of nineteen. My blood seemed to make music in my vessels as
it seemed to come more highly oxygenized singing to my brain, and
tingled fresher and warmer into the capillaries of the entire surface,
leaping and bubbling like a mountain-brook after a shower. I knew not
at first what it could be, but I felt as if I could have bounded to
the desk and taken the place of the professor. For a while, I say, I
could not realize the cause. At last, as with a lightning flash, it
came. Yes! It was the opium.

And at that moment, then and there was signed the bond which was
destined to go far to wither all my fairest hopes; to undermine, while
seeming to build up, my highest aspirations; to bring disunion between
me and those near and dear to me; to frustrate all my plans, and,
while "keeping the word of promise to the ear," ever breaking it to my
hope. As I trace these very characters, I am suffering from the remote
consequences, in a moral point of view, of having set my hand and seal
to that bond.

For two years longer that I remained at college I continued to take
laudanum three times a week, and I could, at the end of this period,
take two drachms (120 drops) at each dose. All this time my appetite,
though not actually destroyed, as it now is, was capricious in the
extreme, though I did not lose flesh, at least not markedly so. On the
other hand, my capability for mental exertion all through this period
was something incredible; and let me say here that one of the most
fascinating effects of the drug in the case of an intellectual and
educated man is the sense it imparts of what might be termed
intellectual daring: add to this the endowments of a strong frame,
high animal spirits, and on such an one, opium is the ladder that
seems to lead to the gates of heaven. But alas for him when at its
topmost rung! After obtaining my degree I gradually eased off the use
of the drug for about three months with but little trouble. I was
waiting for an appointment in India. At the end of the period named I
sailed for my destination, and had almost forgotten the taste of
opium; but I found that I was only respited, not redeemed. Two months
after I had entered upon my duties, and found myself quietly among my
books, the bond was renewed. After two months, in which I passed from
laudanum to crude opium, I finally settled on the alkaloid
_morphia_, as being the most powerful of all the preparations of
opium. I began with half a grain twice a day, and for the six months
ending the last day of September of the just expired year, my daily
quantum was sixty grains--half taken the instant I awoke, the other
half at six o'clock in the evening; and I could no more have avoided
putting into my body this daily supply than I could have walked over a
burning ploughshare without scorching my feet.

For the first year, five grains, or even two and a half, would suffice
for a couple of days; that is to say, there was no craving of the
system for it during its deprivation for this space. At the end of
this period there would be a sense of depression amounting to little
beyond uneasiness. But soon four hours' deprivation of the drug gave
rise to a physical and mental prostration that no pen can adequately
depict, no language convey: a horror unspeakable, a woe unutterable
takes possession of the entire being; a clammy perspiration bedews the
surface, the eye is stony and hard, the noise pointed, as in the
hippocratic face preceding dissolution, the hands uncertain, the mind
restless, the heart as ashes, the "bones marrowless."

To the opium-consumer, when deprived of this stimulant, there is
nothing that life can bestow, not a blessing that man can receive,
which would not come to him unheeded, undesired, and be a curse to
him. There is but one all-absorbing want, one engrossing desire--his
whole being has but one tongue--that tongue syllables but one
word--_morphia_. And oh! the vain, vain attempt to break this
bondage, the labor worse than useless--a minnow struggling to break
the toils that bind a Triton!

I pass over all the horrible physical accompaniments that accumulate
after some hours' deprivation of the drug when it has long been
indulged in, it being borne in mind that it occurs sooner or later
according to the constitution it contends against. Suffice it to say
that the tongue feels like a copper bolt, and one seems to carry one's
alimentary canal in the brain; that is to say, one is perpetually
reminded that there is such a canal from the constant sense of pain
and uneasiness, whereas the perfection of functional performance is
obtained when the mind is unconscious of its operation.

The slightest mental or physical exertion is a matter of absolute
impossibility. The winding of a watch I have regarded as a task of
magnitude when not under the opium influence, and I was no more
capable of controlling, under this condition, the cravings of the
system for its pabulum, by any exertion of the will, than I, or any
one else, could control the dilatation and contraction of the pupils
of the eye under the varying conditions of light and darkness. A time
arrives when the will is killed absolutely and literally, and at this
period you might, with as much reason, tell a man to will not to die
under a mortal disease as to resist the call that his whole being
makes, in spite of him, for the pabulum on which it has so long been
depending for carrying on its work.

When you can with reason ask a man to aerate his lungs with his head
submerged in water--when you can expect him to control the movements
of his limb while you apply an electric current to its motor
nerve--then, but not till then, speak to a confirmed opium-eater of
"exerting his will;" reproach him with want of "determination," and
complacently say to him, "Cast it from you and bear the torture for a
time." Tell him, too, at the same time, to "do without atmospheric
air, to regulate the reflex action of his nervous system and control
the pulsations of his heart." Tell the Ethiopian to change his skin,
but do not mock the misery and increase the agony of a man who has
taken opium for years by talking to him of "will." Let it be
understood that after a certain time (varying, of course, according to
the capability of physical resistance, mode of life, etc., of the
individual) the craving for opium is beyond the domain of the will. So
intolerant is the system under a protracted deprivation, that I know
of two suicides resulting therefrom. They were cases of Chinese who
were under confinement. They were baffled on one occasion in carrying
out a previously-successful device for obtaining the drug. The awful
mystery of death which they rashly solved had no terrors for them
equal to a life without opium, and the morning found them hanging in
their cells, glad to get "anywhere, anywhere out of the world."

I have seen another tear his hair, dig his nails into his flesh, and,
with a ghastly look of despair and a face from which all hope had
fled, and which looked like a bit of shrivelled yellow parchment,
implore for it as if for more than life.

But to return to myself. I attained a daily dose of forty grains, and
on more than one occasion I have consumed sixty. It became my bane and
antidote; with it I was an _unnatural_--without it, less than
man. Food, for months previous to the time of my attaining to such a
dose as sixty grains, became literally loathsome; its sight would
sicken me; my muscles, hitherto firm and well defined, began to
diminish in bulk and to lose their contour; my face looked like a
hatchet covered with yellow ochre: and this is the best and truest
comparison I can institute. It was sharp, foreshortened and
indescribably yellow. I had then been taking _morphia_ for nearly
two years, but only reached and sustained the maximum doses for the
six months already indicated.

Finally, even the sixty grains brought no perceptible increase to the
vitality of which the body seemed deprived during its abstinence. It
stimulated me to not one-tenth of the degree to which a quarter of a
grain had done at the commencement. Still, I had to keep storing it up
in me, trying to extract vivacity, energy, life itself, from that
which was killing me; and grudgingly it gave it. I tried hard to free
myself, tried again and again; but I never could at any time sustain
the struggle for more than four days at the utmost. At the end of that
time I had to yield to my tormentor--yield, broken, baffled, and
dismayed--yield to go through the whole struggle over again; forced to
poison myself--forced with my own hand to shut the door against hope.

With an almost superhuman effort I roused myself to the determination
of doing something, of making one last effort, and, if I failed, to
look my fate in the face. What, thought I, was to be the end of all
the hopes I once cherished, and which were cherished of and for me by
others? of what avail all the learning I had stored up, all the
aspirations I nourished?--all being buried in a grave dug by my own
hand, and laid aside like funeral trappings, out of sight and memory.

I will not detail my struggles nor speak of the hope which I had to
sustain me, and which shone upon me whenever the face of my Maker
seemed turned away. Let it suffice that I fought a desperate
fight. Again and again I recoiled, baffled and disheartened; but one
aim led me on, and I have come out of the _melee_ bruised and
broken it may be, but conquering. One month I waged the fight, and I
have now been nearly two without looking at the drug. Before, four
hours was the longest interval I could endure. Now I am free and the
demon is behind me. I must not fail to add that the advantage of a
naturally sound and preternaturally vigorous constitution, and (except
in the use of opium) one carefully guarded against any of the causes
which impart a vicious state of system and so render it incapable of
recuperative effort, was my main-stay, and acted the part of a
bower-anchor in restoring my general system. This, and a long
sea-voyage, aided efforts which would have been otherwise
fruitless. On the other hand, let us not too rashly cast a stone at
the opium-eater and think of him as a being unworthy of sympathy. If
he is not to be envied--as, God knows, he is not--let him not be too
much contemned.

I do not now refer to the miserable and grovelling Chinese, who are
fed on it almost from the cradle, but to the ordinary cases of
educated and intellectual men in this country and in Europe; and I
assert that, could there be a realization of all the aspirations, all
the longings after the pure, the good and noble that fill the mind and
pervade the heart of a cultivated and refined man who takes to this
drug, he would be indeed the paragon of animals. And I go further and
say that, given a man of cultivated mind, high moral sentiment, and a
keen sense of intellectual enjoyment, blended with strong imaginative
powers, and just in proportion as he is so endowed will the
difficulty be greater in weaning himself from it. I mean, of course,
before the will is killed. When that takes place he is of necessity as
powerless as any other victim, and his craving for it is as automatic
as in the case of any other opium slave. What he becomes then, I have
attempted to describe, and in doing so have suppressed much in
consideration of the feelings of those who read.

This it is to be an opium-eater; and the boldest may well quail at the
picture, drawn not by the hand of fancy, but by one who has supped of
its horrors to the full, and who has found that the staff on which he
leaned has proven a spear which has well-nigh pierced him to the
heart. Let no man believe he will escape: the bond matures at last.

ROBERT HALL--JOHN RANDOLPH--WM. WILBERFORCE,

The compiler has hesitated as to the propriety of calling attention to
the opium-habits of these eminent men, both because little instruction
is afforded by the meagre information that is accessible to him
respecting their use of opium, and because he apprehends their example
may be pleaded in extenuation of the habit. Yet they were confirmed
opium-eaters, and remained such to the day of their death; and a
reference to their cases may not be without its lesson to that large
class of men eminent in public or professional life, who already are,
or are in danger of becoming, victims of the opium tyranny, as well as
to that larger class who find in undiscriminating denunciations of bad
habits, a cheap method of exhibiting a cheap philanthropy.

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