Opium: its use, abuse and cure

Front matter

Glp? SnpnrigWm.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

"m lUSE^BUS

Chapter I. The Mikage Of The Soul : Or The Habit Fokmixg

"The primrose path of dalliance leads to hell.""— Shakespeare.

The dream}-, blissful languor ; the ecstacies of pleasure, described by the Tictims of the morphine habit during the earlier stages of their disease, and while j^et they were only on the confines of the opium Inferno, have been given to the world by various writers, in the most graphic and vivid terms. The subject has been treated of by a master, whose genius has enwrapped it in the most gorgeous robing of balanced sentences and resounding periods, malting the story of the famous opium user a classic in English literature. Every writer upon the subject, when he recalls his experiences, seems to linger upon the pleasurable sensations of his initiation with special fondness. His imagination, so worn and jaded with respect to all other things, renews its strength, in the memory of these first sensations— even adding to the glory of the golden haze in which his soul was veiled, when first he entered the fellowship of

in the island where all things were dim and quiet and far away.

There is a mingling of truth and falsehood in the opium users record of his earlier experiences. Those who have published the story of their lives for the general reader, in books or magazines, while they do not and cannot exaggerate the dreariness of the desert into which the habit leads at last, have haloed the entrance to that desert with an unreal glory. To the cured morphine user it seems as though a luring demon had furnished the inspiration of these records in order to wile innocent souls into bondage and doom them to despair 1

And yet it is difiicult to depict with too much color and light the peace, the perfect calm, the blissful quietude which opium and its preparations bring to the physical nature. They are the masters of nearly every form of bodily pain. The pangs of physical anguish,

10 fromTbondage to freedom:

which before were unbearable, stinging to madness, are suddenly repulsed and kept at bay, as Russian wolves are driven back into the outer darkness by the sudden upleaping of flames from the frightened traveler's camp-flre. The tiger fangs of neuralgia are suddenly wrenched apart by the strong hand of the opium giant, and the shrieking victim has hours of blessed rest ! The agony of diseased nerves is quieted. The morphine spirit touches the tossing victim of sleepless nights and days with its soft white hand, and he becomes as peaceful as a sleeping child. It is a blessed peace, it is a sudden transition from infernal regions to gardens of Paradise !

The sweeping condemnation, indulged in by so many, of the exhibition of the various opium sedatives used by the profession, is not founded upon reason. It results from an uninformed sentimentality. Not for nothing does Nature, our mother, nurse the pale poppy flower in her fruitful soil with out-pouring sunshine. Like the Buddhist Satan, the opium spirit is dual, an angel of light as w^ell as of darkness. It has for humanity blessings as w^ell as curses. The wise and careful physician uses the "drug" to allay the torture of disease, for he knows that the torments of agonized nerves may often be as exhaustive to the vital forces as the malady which causes the anguish. Nor is it the prescription of the physician, or a strict compliance with his directions, which, except in a small percentage of cases, leads to the formation of the morphine habit. There are, of course, thoughtless and inexperienced medical men, who establish in patients the opium craving by their heedless continuance of the "drug." But, as a rule, the victims themselves create the tyrannous appetite by continuing the use of morphia, or other narcotics, after the medical attendant has ceased to prescribe. They have found relief in the "drug," and they prescribe it for themselves. The lesson to be drawn from such instances is, not that physicians should never prescribe opium sedatives to their patients, but that the treatment of disease should be left to those who have devoted their lives to the study of maladies and their remedies.

If patients take up the administration of narcotics to themselves at the point where their physician has ceased to prescribe them, and creating in themselves the morphine habit, they have only themselves to blame; as in this age of public schools, newspapers and of scientific knowledge, none should be ignorant of the powers of opium or morphine, and the dangers attendant upon their continued use. The vast majority of the slaves of the "drug" are neither unlearned nor inexperienced. They stand much above the average in intelligence and general information. How then can they justly plead the excuse of ignorance, and throw the blame upon the physician ? In cases where morphine is administered to ignorant patients to tell them the name of the "drug" which has relieved their pain, might be like pointing out to Adam and his wife the tree of good and evil, and making it easy for them to pluck and eat its fruit. If the patient only knows that he was relieved from pain, but does not know the agent by which relief was obtained, he cannot dispense the potent and dangerous medicine to himself. To keep him in ignorance is his best safeguard. The m^edical profession have, perhaps, enough to lament, and even to repent of, because of their lack of positive knowledge, but the blame of making morphine users need not rest more heavily on their consciences than may be needful to keep them from carelessness in the pursuance of their duty to relieve the physical sufferings of humanity.

I do not, then, deny that the vivid portrayals of the power of opium and its preparations to quiet physical, pain by writers of books and magazine articles upon the opium habit are, in the main, truthful. It is also true that certain unnatural appetites and passions which sometimes become despotic, spoiling the life, and bringing, like a dark cloud over the soul, a tearful dread of desperate crime and awful judgment, are held in check, shorn of their rampant power by the wonderous might of opium. The inebriate sometimes finds at least temporary relief in the "drug" from his tiery craving for alcohol: the abnormally unchaste, through the same magic, obtains relief from this terrible disease.

But it may be gravely questioned whether the glowing language used by writers upon the subject to depict the "flowery beds of ease" upon which the soothing power of opium lays the tormented body, is not only unwise, but positively injurious. However this may be, I do insist that the highly rhetorical descriptions of the effects of opium sedatives upon the mind and its power of thought and imagination, have been pregnant of much harm to the world. The whole subject has been pictured with highest lights and warmest coloring. The reader is told, in effect, that through opium or its preparations he may at once become an orator, a poet, a thinker with grand ideas of liberty and progress, or be lifted from discouragement and even despair to high possibilities of joyous and successful action.

Some writers speak of inspirations, which, at the waving wand of the opium spirit, sweep through the mind lilce mighty winds, awakening great thoughts and original ideas, revealing and arousing into activity mental powers far surpassing those exhibited by the common, unstimulated, and rugged brain. They tell of poetic sensibilities aroused, so that the soul seems to walk in high and equal fellowship with the shades of Shakespeare and Milton, and all the giants of literature. They speak of great schemes for the betterment of mankind revealing themselves to the reformer's thought when wrapped in his opium ecstacy, making the world's future splendid with golden hope and glorious achievement. They tell of the power of expression suddenly developed — the gift of speech bestowed by the spirit of the " drug," making one eloquent to a degree surpassing the highest hopes of his unopiumized dreaming.

They speak too — and ah I how deadly sweet to thousands of aching hearts, and spirits cast down and bruised I — of the opium witchcraft as able to lift "the heart bowed down to heights of calm:" to cure the heartache: to minister to a mind diseased, and soothe the trouble of thick-coming fancies; speak of the

" Sweet, oblivious antidote, Cleansing the bosom of the perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart,"

as soothing mutual sufferings, causing thoughts which torment and feelings which distress, to vanish while the liberated sufferer lies as in a fiery circle, ringed with peace. And at least one of these writers, the one genius of them all, strikes a still higher key, and discourses in tones which, to some, are more fascinating than all the rest. He tells of dreams of indescribable splendor which came to him in the opium torpor, lighting up all the heavens of his sleep with gorgeous coloring, revealing the majestic evolutions of mighty armies, the blast of signaling trumpets, the thrilling rise and dying fall of countless bands of martial music near and far, the shoutings of captains, the muffled thunder of marching feet — an infinite grandeur,— a vision of indescribable magnificence.

Are not such words full of temptation *? They may be inspired, but the inspiration is not breathed by a heavenly spirit. So far as regards these gorgeous cloudlands of almost hysterical description of the effects of opium using, in its earlier stages, upon the faculties of thought, imagination and expression, there is falsehood as well as mischief in them. That they are mischievous, who can doubt? While it is true that by far the greater number of the slaves of opium in its different forms began the use of the '* drug " on account of physical distress, yet the number is by no means small of those who at first took it in order to reproduce, if possible, the mental phenomena of which they had read such marvelous things. Is it strange that the language of DeQuincy, describing in words of stately rhythm and wondrous melody, like majestic organ music, the magnificent dreams and visions of his opium sleep; or that even the lower-keyed, but still vivid and fascinating wordpictures of the wonderful influence of the first few doses of opium upon intellect and fancy, as portrayed by less famous writers in our magazines and newspapers, should tempt men and women to flangerous, deadly experimenting with the ''drug?*' The fact is, that many a student in college, — perhaps the brightest intellect of all — many a young, ambitious literary man or woman, after reading these unwise and most dangerous books, or articles, upon the opium habit, or personal experiences of morphine users, have hastened to procure the "drug" and test upon themselves its magic power !

They, too, desire to dream dreams and see visions. They, too. would become able to weave into stately and splendid language marvelous revelations from some region "East of the sun. West of the moon " unvisited by any mortal but themselves ! They, also, desire to call up the seeming angel and feel the thrill of its kisses on their lips.

They are not wholly ignorant of what they are doing — they have knowledge of the fact that beyond the border land of mirage there lies a baleful desert— but they are tempted by the glittering words in which the opium dream is pictured. They have been told — these writers themselves tell them — that the Lotos Island is the abode of Circe. But desire from within and temptation from without make them heedless of warning. The palace of the siren and its delights are so wonderfully seductive that the sight of the grunting herd of those who have been the lovers of the temptress, and upon whom, in past days, her kisses have wrought swinish transformation, does not deter the flushed, eager new-comer, fresh landed upon the "island of joyance." He sees, as he hastens through shadowy avenues, only the white pillars and shining walls of the enchanted palace, he hears only the tender cadence of invitingvoices— he feels only the longings of passions and the thrills of hope I

Alas for him, if even but once a flame be kindled In his blood by the fatal sweetness of the siren's kiss I

In the case of those who maj' be called "natural" opium users — that is, those in whom the "druj?" arouses the opium ecstac}' — the one, first dose will, in the vast majority of cases, be fatally decisive I

He who, for the first time, calls upon the opium spirit, may see only a beautiful angel with shining face and hovering wings, but if he would only look behind the apparition he would see, cast upon a background of gloom, a grisly shadow rising vast and awful in the twilight — a terrible warning of judgment and of doom. His sorcery has been successful — his incantation has raised the spirit and compelled it to weave its spells around him, but during the short hour of glamour and of dream, he has bound himself to the service of a Satanic master whose rule is pitiless and whose reward is death !

The seeming increased intellectual activity, the apparent enlargement of mental capacity and power which are felt by the morphine inebriate during the first stages of his experience, are real to him, beyond question. To his own consciousness there is no illusion in the visions which he beholds, no deceitfulness in the inspiration which he feels. As he lies steeped in a "tranced calm" the tides of thought seem to roll into his brain from some exhaustless ocean,— the horizon of his daily thinking seems to lift its curtains, revealing infinite reaches of sublime speculation. He believes himself to have passed into a new world. It is a real world to him. It is not a portion of his nature only which is under the mystic charm, but all of it. He himself is under the power of the spell. His faculties of perception and feeling, his will, every part and power of his nature, are wrought upon by the wonderful witchcraft. There is no central quality of will or judgment that is not influenced by the "drug."

This is the Mirage of the Soul! Not only does the morphine neophyte, as he enters the desert of his weary pilgrimage, see an unreal earth and sky, but he also becomes a part of that world, unable to separate himself from it. He is no longer in the actual world, he is no longer a real man. It would not even be correct to say that he is a man plus opium — he is, rather, an opiumized man. He is not so much deceived as transformed. Every thought, every feeling, every act of judgment and will is opium-tinged. The luminous mist does not enwrap the outside world alone — its shining folds enshroud his inmost nature and permeate his whole being. He is himself a part of the opium dream, and cannot separate him-

OR, THE FETTERS BROKElSf. 15

self from its unrealities. WhateTer thirst it may have been which wrought upon him to begin his desert journey — the longing to do great deeds, the craving to search out all hidden things, the ambition to taste all that is strange and weird in human experience, the desire to gain special strength for burdens heavy to bear, or to endure troublps which torment the spirit and mar the life — whatever thirst may have parched him — he is a portion of the visions which he beholds, the shining waters and the shading palms are in his own soul, they are a part of himself. The deception is absolute. In body, soul and spirit there remains not one sensation, not one power by which an actual, true perception of the real world can be obtained. Surely one in this condition cannot correctly judge of the value of his thoughts and the genuineness of his revelations I

The reader will bear in mind that it is of the beginning of the morphine habit that we are speaking. What has just been said of the influence of the "drug" upon the entire nature will apply with still greater force to the condition of those in whom the appetite has become confirmed. But, in view of the language used by writers in depicting the delightful sensations and effects produced by the first moderate doses of the "drug,'* it is necessary to insist with great emphasis that, in the exhilarations, the enchantment of the first experiments in opium intoxication there is an element of deceit and falsehood. The narcotic ecstacies do not bring forth genuine fruit. The thinking which one does while lulled by morphine witchery is not nearly so original or brilliant as it appeared when it flashed through the dreamer's consciousness. It will not endure the test of true criticism, viewed in the light of the facts and principles of this real work-a-day world.

The young preacher who nerves himself with two or three pellets of morphine to face his congregation and overcome the fatigue and shrinking which oppress him, may, at the time, believe that he is reaching the loftiest heights of eloquence. But, however greatly an audience, satisfied with rhetoric and declamation, may admire his morphinized oratory, their lives will not be influenced by his words. He seems himself to have been caught up into paradise and to have heard unspeakable words — but it was not the Paradise of God. The eloquence produced by narcotic poisons — can it be true eloquence? — can it have that touch of nature to which all hearts respond? Let the testimony of the thousands of authors, lawyers, and clergymen, who have become confirmed in the habit of

IH FROM BONDAGE TO FREEDOM:

opium using, be taken on this point and they will admit that their stimulated brilliancy of thought and expression did not, in its effects, fulfill their anticipations.

How can a speaker whose mouth and throat are dry, whose voice is husky and whose eyes are dulled, have the highest and most effective power over his audience? But his first tampering with the "drug"' will have these physical effects.

Literature has received little, if any, enrichment from opium using. Granting that the "Confessions," the " Raven," the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and "Kubla Khan " were inspired by the poppy juice— what thoughtful critic would claim that these are to be classed with the strong, healthy poems which live on because they are full of "sweetness and light"? It is doubtful if these weird creations, as a whole, are ever highly esteemed by sound and balanced intellects except for the music of their rhythm, or as studies of the effects of a diseased imagination. It is the immature or the abnormally developed mind which regards them as masterpieces. And as for the best that is in them like those stanzas in the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner : "

" Sometimes, a-dropping from the sky.

I heard the sky lark siug; Sometimes all little birds that are,— How they seemed to fill the sea and air With their sweet .iargoningi

A noise like that of a hidden brook.

In the leafy month of June That, to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune.

*******

He prayeth best who loveth best And all things both gi'eat and small : For the dear God who loveth us.

He made and loveth all : — "

these may well be credited to those periods when the grasp of the black tyrant was slackened, and the soul looked out through clearing eyes upon Nature and Heaven.

It is not through morphine inspiration that writers can lead us to the sweet spring waters and golden fruits of our mother Nature. As soon as the "drug" begins to drone its lullaby and lap the senses in its waking dreams, the eye-lids droop, the iris contracts, and a veil comes down between the senses and the outward world. How

can one in such a condition see, as they are, '"this goodly frame, the earth; this most excellent canopy, the air: this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire? " He is separated from these things. He can no longer press his heart against the hosom of isTature and feel its mighty throb. His perceptions and his sympathies are dulled. The veil in which he has enshrouded himself shuts out from his soul the true "light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world."

It w^ould contravene an eternal l«w — that law which has been? and ever will be, the only basis for attainment of great success and high reward, if merely swallowing a white powder or a dark gum can make it possible to achieve great things in any field of work. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread" — that is the immutable, the unescapable ordinance. Who ever has, who ever can, evade it? Real, solid, lasting results are reached only by honest and severe labor — not by morphine stimulation — not by any false or easy way whatsoever. That is the perpetual, unchanging law of Xature and of God. To endeavor to escape from its sway is to enter upon a life tinged at its beginning w'ith falsehood, and surely tending to failure and despair.

It would not be just to close this chapter without again referring to the very large class who acquired the habit of using some form of opium, not for the sake of its mental stimulus, or to make labor more easy, or simply as an intoxicant, but to escape physical anguish which they felt too terrible to endure. To blame them harshly for seeking the relief which the "drug" affords in such cases would be to add an undeserved burden to those whose load is, without it, too heavy for them. If some of them were too easily induced to begin the habit, if, shrinking too sensitively from pain, they hasten to alleviate, by the use of morphine, sufferings which they might have endured, who shall speak severely of their weakness, now that they have come into the bitter bondage of an anguish which torments not only the body but the soul ! Let no useless blame be cast upon them. If in the past they were weak, they now comprehend that fact better than any one else can know it, and he would be heartless indeed w^ho would add even a little to the burden which crushes them beneath its weight. Of all the causes of self-reproach which fill the hearts of the slaves of opium with increasing remorse and self-condemnation, the fact that their enslavement began in their own weakness is the sorest. Of them

18 FROM BONDAGE TO FREEDOM t

it may be truly said, "the heart knoweth its own bitterness."

And as for those who sought relief in morphine from the sorrows of life — upon whom calamity came suddenly, beating them down as the tall grain is prostrated by driving storms; those whose light of hope went out in sudden darkness: those who saw that all the future held for them only weariness and heartache and tears — who shall cast the first stone at them ? No doubt it is true that thousands of men and women find their only relief from bitter memories and from daily, hopeless sorrow in the benumbing influence of morphine.

It is not because of the climatic influences alone that the Southern States contain so many who are addicted to the use of opium. The ruin wrought by the war extends beyond the loss of lives and the wTeck of fortunes. It has caused^ many a bereaved and despairing woman, many a man, ruined in property and hopeless of regaining the wealth and position he has lost, to endeavor to dull all their sensibilities and make life endurable by the use of the "drug." Thus the devastation has continued long after wrecked plantations have been restored and earth-works ploughed level with the ground. It reaches to those still living, who, having desperately sought alleviation from mental suffering in the narcotic are now living a "death in life."

But who, knowing what these men and women were, in the 3'ears long past, what they have suffered, and into what state they have at last come, shall reproach them ? If their pride repels our pity, let us sit in silence in the presence of their great calamity, only eager, if but once they lift to us despairing but yet questioning eyes, to point out to them, if possible, some certain way of deliverance.

In speaking, as I have in this chapter, of the forming of the opium habit, it has been my earnest desire to discourage any as yet unscathed reader from those beginnings which are so seductive and so deadly. Do not cross the confines of the opium desert, nor even once look upon and become a part of its mirage. Many a confirmed opium user, who first took the "drug" to alleviate physical tortures of the most intense kind, will now say that he wishes he had died in agony rather than have become what he is. Let the weary and heavy laden still endeavor to bear and wait and hope. To seek mitigation of mental sufferings in opium or morphine is to woo a deeper sorrow, an intenser despair.

t

CHAPTER II. morphia-mania; or, the habit established.

How use doth breed a habit in a man.— Shalcespeare. O death in life,— the days that are no more.— Tennyson.

It is not given to any human being to know the line at which an indulgence becomes a habit. That line has been crossed by the feet of innumerable millions hastening with laughter and shouting along the first gentle descent of the way to death — but not one of them saw, or could ever tell just where the fatal point was passed. They did not look, they did not think, they did not heed. The laws which avenge evil indulgences by changing them into tyrannous habits are indeed shod with wool, and do their work with quiet, noiseless hands. Slowly, unceasingly— "without ha^te, without rest" — the wreaths of flowers are replaced by silken bands, and the bands of silk by chains of steel. .The consciousness of liberty remains long after the bondage has become as fixed and certain as the grasp of Fate.

This statement applies with peculiar force to the involuntary opium victim. There are, indeed, too many cases in which the sufferer on a sick bed, from long continued and intense pain, has believed himself compelled for the sake of rest— for the sake of life, even,— to alleviatf^ his torments with the v>^eapons which only the poppy provides. Suddenly and without warning he discovers that he has acquired the Opium Habit : —acquired it without having experienced one pleasant hour of dalliance with the "drug" — no exhilirations, no mental up-liftings during the initiation. Physical agony had absorbed his powers of attention and thought. He could not heed the warning voice which began to sound before the fatal line was reached; — without a knowledge of the fact, he found himself captive to a giant whose grasp was pitiless, whose power was relentless.

But those who are themselves responsible, to a greater or lesser extent, for beginning and continuing the use of the " drug, " do not become aware of their slavery until long after their captivity is assured. They still imagine the opium spirit to be their servant, or their playfellow, when, long before, it has become a tyrant master. But at what time, in the earlier days of thoughtless or willful tam-

20 FROM BOjSTDAGE TO FREEDOM;

pering with the "drug, "the transformation occurred, they cannot tell. Once the}^ were free — now bodj^ and soul are given over to a slavery whose dull days are passing wearily, and upon which little light is cast except by the memory of "days that are no more." That is all they know.

Probably in the majority of cases, at the time of initiation into the habit, the morphine doses are not taken daily, but at intervals of three or four days — or whenever pain or desire calls for it. After the first exhilarative or sedative effects there may be a period of several days during which no uneasiness, and no desire to resort to the drug is felt. The thoughtless dupe is ignorant of the more subtle and lasting effects of opium and morphine. He imagines that the influences of each his doses are limited to the period during which he experiences the pleasant and the more positive reactive or secondary effects of it. He does not suspect that his quietude and freedom from desire for the opiate are caused by what he has taken two or three days before. He thinks himself to be still his own master— if he thinks at all — he honestly believes that he "can quit when he wants to, " because of these intervals between his days of indulgence. If he can go one or two days after apparent effects of his dose have passed away, why cannot he extend the time of abstinence four or Ave days, a week, — or indefinitely just as long as he may please ? Thus he argues to himself — thus he persuades himself — not knowing that the feeling of liberty with which he quiets himself is but the " stuff that dreams are made of. *' Then, too, his delusion is strengthened by the quiet, insinuating nature of his desire for another dose when at length the want of it begins to be felt. If he could not obtain the opiate as soon as he begins to think about it and feel its influence will be pleasant or helpful, he would soon be aroused to the fact that he had lost his freedom. The agony caused by nerves and brain awaking from their enforced torpor would fill body and mind with horror and anguish, and that he has already become an " opium user, " would be testified by a thousand shrieking voices crying out from every particle of his frame. If any reader has begun to question within himself whether as yet he has become one of the many hundred thousand American opium users, let him test his condition by doubling or trebling the interval between his last dose and the next.