The Opium Habit by Horace B. Day

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On which last notice I would remark that mine was _too_ rapid,
and the suffering therefore needlessly aggravated; or rather perhaps
it was not sufficiently continuous and equably graduated. But that the
reader may judge for himself, and above all that the opium-eater who
is preparing to retire from business may have every sort of
information before him, I subjoin my diary.

FIRST WEEK
Drops of Laud.
Monday, June 24....... 130
Tuesday, " 25....... 140
Wednesday, " 26....... 130
Thursday, " 27....... 80
Friday, " 28....... 80
Saturday, " 29....... 80
Sunday, " 30....... 80

SECOND WEEK
Drops of Laud.
Monday, July 1........ 80
Tuesday, " 2........ 80
Wednesday, " 3........ 90
Thursday, " 4........ 100
Friday " 5........ 80
Saturday, " 6........ 80
Sunday, " 7........ 80

THIRD WEEK
Drops of Laud.
Monday, July 8........ 300
Tuesday, " 9........ 50
Wednesday, " 10
Thursday, " 11 Hiatus in
Friday, " 12 MS
Saturday, " 13
Sunday, " 14....... 76

FOURTH WEEK
Drops of Laud.
Monday, July 15....... 76
Tuesday, " 16....... 73-1/2
Wednesday, " 17....... 73-1/2
Thursday, " 18....... 70
Friday, " 19....... 240
Saturday, " 20....... 80
Sunday, " 21....... 350

FIFTH WEEK
Drops of Laud.
Monday, July 22....... 60
Tuesday, " 23.......none.
Wednesday, " 24.......none.
Thursday, " 25.......none.
Saturday, " 27.......none.
Friday, " 26....... 200

What mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will ask, perhaps, to such
numbers as 300, 350, etc.? The _impulse_ to these relapses was
mere infirmity of purpose; the _motive_, where any motive blended
with the impulse, was either the principle of "_reculer pour mieux
sauter_" (for under the torpor of a large dose, which lasted for a
day or two, a less quantity satisfied the stomach, which on awaking
found itself partly accustomed to this new ration), or else it was
this principle--that of sufferings otherwise equal, those will be
borne best which meet with a mood of anger. Now whenever I ascended to
any large dose I was furiously incensed on the following day, and
could then have borne any thing.

The narrative part of De Quincey's "Confessions" by no means exhausts
the story of his suffering as recorded by himself. Scattered through
his miscellaneous papers are to be found frequent references to the
opium habit and its protracted hold upon the system long after the
drug itself had been discarded. The succeeding extracts from his
"Literary Reminiscences" will throw light upon his bodily and mental
condition in the years immediately following his opium struggle:

"I was ill at that time and for years after--ill from the effects of
opium upon the liver, and one primary indication of any illness felt
in that organ is peculiar depression of spirits. Hence arose a
singular effect of reciprocal action in maintaining a state of
dejection. From the original physical depression caused by the
derangement of the liver arose a sympathetic depression of the mind,
disposing me to believe that I never _could_ extricate myself;
and from this belief arose, by reaction, a thousand-fold increase of
the physical depression. I began to view my unhappy London life--a
life of literary toils odious to my heart--as a permanent state of
exile from my Westmoreland home. My three eldest children, at that
time in the most interesting stages of childhood and infancy, were in
Westmoreland, and so powerful was my feeling (derived merely from a
deranged liver) of some long, never-ending separation from my family,
that at length, in pure weakness of mind, I was obliged to relinquish
my daily walks in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens from the misery of
seeing children in multitudes that too forcibly recalled my own.

"Meantime it is very true that the labors I had to face would not even
to myself, in a state of good bodily health, have appeared
alarming. _Myself_, I say, for in any state of health I do not
write with rapidity. Under the influence, however, of opium, when it
reaches its maximum in diseasing the liver and deranging the digestive
functions, all exertion whatever is revolting in excess. Intellectual
exertion above all is connected habitually, when performed under opium
influence, with a sense of disgust the most profound for the subject
(no matter what) which detains the thoughts; all that morning
freshness of animal spirits, which under ordinary circumstances
consumes, as it were, and swallows up the interval between one's self
and one's distant object, all that dewy freshness is exhaled and
burned off by the parching effects of opium on the animal economy.

"I was, besides, and had been for some time engaged in the task of
unthreading the labyrinth by which I had reached, unawares, my present
state of slavery to opium. I was descending the mighty ladder,
stretching to the clouds as it seemed, by which I had imperceptibly
attained my giddy altitude--that point from which it had seemed
equally impossible to go forward or backward. To wean myself from
opium I had resolved inexorably, and finally I accomplished my
vow. But the transition state was the worst state of all to
support. All the pains of martyrdom were there; all the ravages in the
economy of the great central organ, the stomach, which had been
wrought by opium; the sickening disgust which attended each separate
respiration; and the rooted depravation of the appetite and the
digestion--all these must be weathered for months upon months, and
without stimulus (however false and treacherous) which, for some part
of each day, the old doses of laudanum would have supplied. These
doses were to be continually diminished, and under this difficult
dilemma: If, as some people advised, the diminution were made by so
trifling a quantity as to be imperceptible, in that case the duration
of the process was interminable and hopeless--thirty years would not
have sufficed to carry it through. On the other hand, if twenty-five
to fifty drops were withdrawn on each day (that is, from one to two
grains of opium), inevitably within three, four, or five days the
deduction began to tell grievously, and the effect was to restore the
craving for opium more keenly than ever. There was the collision of
both evils--that from the laudanum and that from the want of
laudanum. The last was a state of distress perpetually increasing, the
other was one which did not sensibly diminish--no, not for a long
period of months. Irregular motions, impressed by a potent agent upon
the blood and other processes of life, are slow to subside; they
maintain themselves long after the exciting cause has been partially
or even wholly withdrawn; and, in my case, they did not perfectly
subside into the motion of tranquil health for several years. From all
this it will be easy to understand the _fact_--though after all
impossible, without a similar experience, to understand the
_amount_--of my suffering and despondency in the daily task upon
which circumstances had thrown me at this period--the task of writing
and producing something for the journals, _invita Minerva_. Over
and above the principal operation of my suffering state, as felt in
the enormous difficulty with which it loaded every act of exertion,
there was another secondary effect which always followed as a reaction
from the first. And that this was no accident or peculiarity attached
to my individual temperament, I may presume from the circumstance that
Mr. Coleridge experienced the very same sensations, in the same
situation, throughout his literary life, and has often noticed it to
me with surprise and vexation. The sensation was that of powerful
disgust with any subject upon which he had occupied his thoughts or
had exerted his powers of composition for any length of time, and an
equal disgust with the result of his exertions--powerful abhorrence, I
may call it, absolute loathing of all that he had produced.

"In after years Coleridge assured me that he never could read any
thing he had written without a sense of overpowering disgust. Reverting
to my own case, which was pretty nearly the same as this, there was,
however, this difference--that at times, when I had slept at more
regular hours for several nights consecutively, and had armed myself
by a sudden increase of the opium for a few days running, I recovered
at times a remarkable glow of jovial spirits. In some such artificial
respites, it was, from my usual state of distress, and purchased at a
heavy price of subsequent suffering, that I wrote the greater part of
the opium 'Confessions' in the autumn of 1821.

"These circumstances I mention to account for my having written any
thing in a happy or genial state of mind, when I was in a general
state so opposite, by my own description, to every thing like
enjoyment. That description, as a _general_ one, states most truly the
unhappy condition, and the somewhat extraordinary condition of feeling
to which opium had brought me. I, like Mr. Coleridge, could not endure
what I had written for some time after I had written it. I also shrunk
from treating any subject which I had much considered; but more, I
believe, as recoiling from the intricacy and the elaborateness which
had been made known to me in the course of considering it, and on
account of the difficulty or the toilsomeness which might be fairly
presumed from the mere fact that I _had_ long considered it, or could
have found it necessary to do so, than from any blind mechanical
feeling inevitably associated (as in Coleridge it was) with a second
survey of the same subject. One other effect there was from the opium,
and I believe it had some place in Coleridge's list of morbid
affections caused by opium, and of disturbances extended even to the
intellect, which was, that the judgment was for a time grievously
impaired, sometimes even totally abolished, as applied to any thing I
had recently written. Fresh from the labor of composition, I believe,
indeed, that almost every man, unless he has had a very long and close
experience in the practice of writing, finds himself a little dazzled
and bewildered in computing the effect, as it will appear to neutral
eyes, of what he has produced. But the incapacitation which I speak of
here as due to opium, is of another kind and another degree. It is
mere childish helplessness, or senile paralysis, of the judgment,
which distresses the man in attempting to grasp the upshot and the
total effect (the _tout ensemble_) of what he has himself so recently
produced. There is the same imbecility in attempting to hold things
steadily together, and to bring them under a comprehensive or unifying
act of the judging faculty, as there is in the efforts of a drunken
man to follow a chain of reasoning. Opium is said to have some
_specific_ effect of debilitation upon the memory: [Footnote: The
technical memory, or that which depends upon purely arbitrary links of
connection, and therefore more upon a _nisus_ or separate activity of
the mind--that memory, for instance, which recalls names--is
undoubtedly affected, and most powerfully, by opium. On the other
hand, the _logical_ memory, or that which recalls facts that are
connected by fixed relations, and where A being given, B must go
before or after--historical memory, for instance--is not much affected
by opium.] that is, not merely the general one which might be supposed
to accompany its morbid effects upon the bodily system, but some
other, more direct, subtle, and exclusive; and this, of whatever
nature, may possibly extend to the faculty of judging. Such, however,
over and above the more known and more obvious ill effects upon fhe
spirits and the health, were some of the stronger and more subtle
effects of opium in disturbing the intellectual system as well as the
animal, the functions of the will also no less than those of the
intellect, from which both Coleridge and myself were suffering at the
period to which I now refer (1821-25); evils which found their fullest
exemplification in the very act upon which circumstances had now
thrown me as the _sine qua non_ of my extrication from difficulties--
viz., the act of literary composition. This necessity--the fact of its
being my one sole resource for the present, and the established
experience which I now had of the peculiar embarrassments and
counteracting forces which I should find in opium, but still more in
the train of consequences left behind by past opium--strongly
co-operated with the mere physical despondency arising out of the
liver: and the state of partial unhappiness, among other outward
indications, expressed itself by one mark, which some people are apt
greatly to misapprehend--as if it were some result of a sentimental
turn of feeling--I mean perpetual sighs. But medical men must very
well know that a certain state of the liver, _mechanically_ and
without any co-operation of the will, expresses itself in sighs. I
was much too firm-minded and too reasonable to murmur or complain. I
certainly suffered deeply, as one who finds himself a banished man
from all that he loves, and who had not the consolations of hope, but
feared too profoundly that all my efforts--efforts poisoned so sadly
by opium--might be unavailing for the end.

"In 1824 I had come up to London upon an errand--in itself
sufficiently vexatious--of fighting against pecuniary embarrassments
by literary labors; but, as always happened hitherto, with very
imperfect success, from the miserable thwartings I incurred through
the deranged state of the liver. My zeal was great and my application
was unintermitting, but spirits radically vitiated, chiefly through
the direct mechanical depression caused by one important organ
deranged; and secondly, by a reflex effect of depression, through my
own thoughts in estimating my prospects, together with the aggravation
of my case by the inevitable exile from my own mountain home--all this
reduced the value of my exertion in a deplorable way. It was rare,
indeed, that I could satisfy my own judgment even tolerably with the
quality of any article I produced; and my power to make sustained
exertions drooped in a way I could not control, every other hour of
the day; insomuch that, what with parts to be cancelled, and what with
whole days of torpor and pure defect of power to produce any thing at
all, very often it turned out that all my labors were barely
sufficient (sometimes not sufficient) to meet the current expenses of
my residence in London. Gloomy indeed was my state of mind at that
period, for though I made prodigious efforts to recover my health, yet
all availed me not, and a curse seemed to settle upon whatever I then
undertook. One canopy of murky clouds brooded forever upon my spirits,
which were in one uniformly low key of cheerless despondency."

De Quincey has given his views pretty freely as to the regimen to be
observed by reforming opium-eaters, in a paper on "The Temperance
Movement" which is specially worthy of attention.

"My own experience had never travelled in that course which could much
instruct me in the miseries from wine or in the resources for
struggling with it. I had repeatedly been obliged, indeed, to lay it
aside altogether; but in this I never found room for more than seven
or ten days' struggle: excesses I had never practiced in the use of
wine: simply the habit of using it, and the collateral habits formed
by excessive use of opium, had produced no difficulty at all in
resigning it even on an hour's notice. From opium I derive my right of
offering hints at all upon the subject of abstinence in other
forms. But the modes of suffering from the evil, and the separate
modes of suffering from the effort of self-conquest, together with
errors of judgment incident to such states of transitional torment,
are all nearly allied, practically analogous as regards the remedies,
even if characteristically distinguished to the inner consciousness. I
make no scruple, therefore, of speaking as from a station of high
experience and of most watchful attention, which never remitted even
under sufferings that were at times absolutely frantic. Once for all,
however, in cases deeply rooted no advances ought ever to be made but
by small stages; for the effect, which is insensible at first, by the
tenth, twelfth, or fifteenth day generally accumulates unendurably
under any bolder deduction. Certain it is, that by an error of this
nature at the outset, most natural to human impatience under exquisite
suffering, too generally the triai is abruptly brought to an end
through the crisis of a passionate relapse.

"Another object, and one to which the gladiator matched in single duel
with intemperance must direct a religious vigilance, is the
digestibility of his food. It must be digestible not only by its
original qualities, but also by its culinary preparation.

"The whole process and elaborate machinery of digestion are felt to be
mean and humiliating when viewed in relation to our mere animal
economy. But they rise into dignity and assert their own supreme
importance when they are studied from another station, viz., in
relation to the intellect and temper. No man dares _then_ to
despise them; it is then seen that these functions of the human system
form the essential basis upon which the strength and health of our
higher nature repose; and that upon these functions, chiefly, the
general happiness of life is dependent. All the rules of prudence or
gifts of experience that life can accumulate, will never do as much
for human comfort and welfare as would be done by a stricter
attention, and a wiser science, directed to the digestive system. In
this attention lies the key to any perfect restoration for the victim
of intemperance. The sheet-anchor for the storm-beaten sufferer who is
laboring to recover a haven of rest from the agonies of intemperance,
and who has had the fortitude to abjure the poison which ruined, but
which also for brief intervals offered him his only consolation, lies,
beyond all doubt, in a most anxious regard to every thing connected
with this supreme function of our animal economy. By how much the
organs of digestion are feebler, by so much is it the more
indispensable that solid and animal food should be adopted. A robust
stomach may be equal to the trying task of supporting a fluid such as
tea for breakfast; but for a feeble stomach, and still worse for a
stomach _enfeebled_ by bad habits, broiled beef or something
equally solid and animal, but not too much subjected to the action of
fire, is the only tolerable diet. This indeed is the capital rule for
a sufferer from habitual intoxication, who must inevitably labor under
an impaired digestion: that as little as possible he should use of any
liquid diet, and as little as possible of vegetable diet. Beef and a
little bread (at the least sixty hours old) compose the privileged
bill of fare for his breakfast. Errors of digestion, either from
impaired powers or from powers not so much enfeebled as deranged, is
the one immeasurable source both of disease and of secret wretchedness
to the human race. Next, after the most vigorous attention, and a
scientific attention, to the digestive system, in power of operation,
stands _exercise_. For myself, under the ravages of opium, I have
found walking the most beneficial exercise; besides that, it requires
no previous notice or preparation of any kind; and this is a capital
advantage in a state of drooping energies, or of impatient and
unresting agitation. I may mention, as possibly an accident of my
individual temperament, but possibly, also, no accident at all, that
the relief obtained by walking was always most sensibly brought home
to my consciousness, when some part of it (at least a mile and a half)
had been performed before breakfast. In this there soon ceased to be
any difficulty; for, while under the full oppression of opium it was
impossible for me to rise at any hour that could, by the most
indulgent courtesy, be described as within the pale of morning, no
sooner had there been established any considerable relief from this
oppression than the tendency was in the opposite direction--the
difficulty became continually greater of sleeping even to a reasonable
hour. Having once accomplished the feat of walking at 9 A.M., I backed
in a space of seven or eight months to eight o'clock, to seven, to
six, five, four, three; until at this point a metaphysical fear fell
upon me that I was actually backing into 'yesterday,' and should soon
have no sleep at all. Below three, however, I did not descend; and,
for a couple of years, three and a half hours' sleep was all that I
could obtain in the twenty-four hours. From this no particular
suffering arose, except the nervous impatience of lying in bed for one
moment after awaking. Consequently the habit of walking before
breakfast became at length troublesome no longer as a most odious
duty, but on the contrary, as a temptation that could hardly be
resisted on the wettest mornings. As to the quantity of the exercise,
I found that six miles a day formed the _minimum_ which would
support permanently a particular standard of animal spirits, evidenced
to myself by certain apparent symptoms. I averaged about nine and a
half miles a day, but ascended on particular days to fifteen or
sixteen, and more rarely to twenty-three or twenty-four; a quantity
which did not produce fatigue: on the contrary it spread a sense of
improvement through almost the whole week that followed; but usually,
in the night immediately succeeding to such an exertion, I lost much
of my sleep--a privation that under the circumstances explained,
deterred me from trying the experiment too often. For one or two years
I accomplished more than I have here claimed, viz., from six to seven
thousand miles in the twelve months.

"A necessity more painful to me by far than that of taking continued
exercise arose out of a cause which applies perhaps with the same
intensity only to opium cases, but must also apply in some degree to
all cases of debilitation from morbid stimulation of the nerves,
whether by means of wine, or opium, or distilled liquors. In
travelling on the outside of mails during my youthful days, I made the
discovery that opium, after an hour or so, diffuses a warmth deeper
and far more permanent than could be had from any other known
source. I mention this to explain in some measure the awful passion of
cold which for some years haunted the inverse process of laying aside
the opium. It was a perfect frenzy of misery; cold was a sensation
which then first, as a mode of torment, seemed to have been
revealed. In the months of July and August, and not at all the less
during the very middle watch of the day, I sat in the closest
proximity to a blazing fire: cloaks, blankets, counterpanes,
hearth-rugs, horse-cloths, were piled upon my shoulders, but with
hardly a glimmering of relief.

"At night, and after taking coffee, I felt a little warmer, and could
sometimes afford to smile at the resemblance of my own case to that of
Harry Gile. Meantime, the external phenomenon by which the cold
expressed itself was a sense (but with little reality) of eternal
freezing perspiration. From this I was never free; and at length,
from finding one general ablution sufficient for one day, I was thrown
upon the irritating necessity of repeating it more frequently than
would seem credible if stated. At this time I used always hot water,
and a thought occurred to me very seriously that it would be best to
live constantly, and perhaps to sleep, in a bath. What caused me to
renounce this plan was an accident that compelled me for one day to
use cold water. This, first of all, communicated any lasting warmth;
so that ever afterward I used none _but_ cold water. Now to live
in a cold bath in our climate, and in my own state of preternatural
sensibility to cold, was not an idea to dally with. I wish to mention,
however, for the information of other sufferers in the same way, one
change in the mode of applying the water which led to a considerable
and a sudden improvement in the condition of my feelings. I had
endeavored in vain to procure a child's battledore, as an easy means
(when clothed with sponge) of reaching the interspace between the
shoulders. In default of a battledore, therefore, my necessity threw
my experiment upon a long hair-brush; and this, eventually, proved of
much greater service than any sponge or any battledore, for the
friction of the brush caused an irritation on the surface of the skin,
which, more than any thing else, has gradually diminished the once
continual misery of unrelenting frost, although even yet it renews
itself most distressingly at uncertain intervals.

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