The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater | Page 5

of alcohol, I take it for granted
That those eat now who never ate before; And those who always ate,
now eat the more.
Indeed, the fascinating powers of opium are admitted even by medical
writers, who are its greatest enemies. Thus, for instance, Awsiter,
apothecary to Greenwich Hospital, in his "Essay on the Effects of
Opium" (published in the year 1763), when attempting to explain why
Mead had not been sufficiently explicit on the properties, counteragents,
&c., of this drug, expresses himself in the following mysterious terms
([Greek text]): "Perhaps he thought the subject of too delicate a nature
to be made common; and as many people might then indiscriminately
use it, it would take from that necessary fear and caution which should
prevent their experiencing the extensive power of this drug, FOR
THERE ARE MANY PROPERTIES IN IT, IF UNIVERSALLY
KNOWN, THAT WOULD HABITUATE THE USE, AND MAKE IT
MORE IN REQUEST WITH US THAN WITH TURKS
THEMSELVES; the result of which knowledge," he adds, "must prove

a general misfortune." In the necessity of this conclusion I do not
altogether concur; but upon that point I shall have occasion to speak at
the close of my Confessions, where I shall present the reader with the
MORAL of my narrative.

PRELIMINARY CONFESSIONS

These preliminary confessions, or introductory narrative of the youthful
adventures which laid the foundation of the writer's habit of
opium-eating in after-life, it has been judged proper to premise, for
three several reasons:
1. As forestalling that question, and giving it a satisfactory answer,
which else would painfully obtrude itself in the course of the Opium
Confessions--"How came any reasonable being to subject himself to
such a yoke of misery; voluntarily to incur a captivity so servile, and
knowingly to fetter himself with such a sevenfold chain?"--a question
which, if not somewhere plausibly resolved, could hardly fail, by the
indignation which it would be apt to raise as against an act of wanton
folly, to interfere with that degree of sympathy which is necessary in
any case to an author's purposes.
2. As furnishing a key to some parts of that tremendous scenery which
afterwards peopled the dreams of the Opium-eater.
3. As creating some previous interest of a personal sort in the
confessing subject, apart from the matter of the confessions, which
cannot fail to render the confessions themselves more interesting. If a
man "whose talk is of oxen" should become an opium-eater, the
probability is that (if he is not too dull to dream at all) he will dream
about oxen; whereas, in the case before him, the reader will find that
the Opium-eater boasteth himself to be a philosopher; and accordingly,
that the phantasmagoria of HIS dreams (waking or sleeping,
day-dreams or night-dreams) is suitable to one who in that character
Humani nihil a se alienum putat.
For amongst the conditions which he deems indispensable to the
sustaining of any claim to the title of philosopher is not merely the
possession of a superb intellect in its ANALYTIC functions (in which
part of the pretensions, however, England can for some generations
show but few claimants; at least, he is not aware of any known

candidate for this honour who can be styled emphatically A SUBTLE
THINKER, with the exception of SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE,
and in a narrower department of thought with the recent illustrious
exception {2} of DAVID RICARDO) but also on such a constitution of
the MORAL faculties as shall give him an inner eye and power of
intuition for the vision and the mysteries of our human nature: THAT
constitution of faculties, in short, which (amongst all the generations of
men that from the beginning of time have deployed into life, as it were,
upon this planet) our English poets have possessed in the highest
degree, and Scottish professors {3} in the lowest.
I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium- eater,
and have suffered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my acquaintance
from being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings
which I shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this
practice purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable
excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. True it is
that for nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium for the sake of
the exquisite pleasure it gave me; but so long as I took it with this view
I was effectually protected from all material bad consequences by the
necessity of interposing long intervals between the several acts of
indulgence, in order to renew the pleasurable sensations. It was not for
the purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest
degree, that I first began to use opium as