I am no 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 know why this is true, or that is so, 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 he must have 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 being plunged 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 of opium 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 the abnormal 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 be certain to 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 effect in, 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 things do crawl 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 indulged this 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.