The Delusions and Miseries of the First Stages of Opium Eating.

From the 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 diarrhoea; 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 diarrhoea, 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 referred to 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 diarrhoea 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 waves again, 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.