The Opium Habit | Page 5

opium

irregularly and at considerable intervals from the year 1804 to 1812,
and that during this time opium had not become a daily necessity; that
in the year 1813 he had become a confirmed opium-eater, "of whom to
ask whether on any particular day he had or had not taken opium,
would be to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration, or the
heart fulfilled its functions;" that in the year 1821 he had published his
"Confessions," in which, while leading the unobservant reader to think
that he had mastered the habit, he had in truth only so far succeeded as
to reduce his daily allowance from a quantity varying from fifty or
sixty to one hundred and fifty grains, down to one varying from seven
to twelve grains; that in the year 1822 an appendix was added to the
"Confessions" which contained a tabular statement of his further
progress toward an absolute abandonment of the drug, and indicating
his gradual descent, day by day, for thirty-five days, when the reader is
naturally led to suppose that the experiment was triumphantly closed by
his entire disuse of opium.
I had failed, however, to observe that a few pages preceding this
detailed statement the writer had given a faint intimation that the
experiment had been a more protracted one than was indicated by the
table. I had also failed to notice the fact that no real progress had been
made during the first four weeks of the attempt: the average quantity of
laudanum daily consumed for the first week being one hundred and
three drops; of the second, eighty-four drops; of the third, one hundred
and forty-two drops; and of the fourth, one hundred and thirty-eight
drops; and that in the fifth week the self-denial of more than three days
had been rewarded with the indulgence of three hundred drops on the
fourth. A careful comparison of this kind, showing that in an entire
month the average of the first week had been but one hundred and three
drops, while the average of the last had been one hundred and
thirty-eight drops, and that in the fifth week a frantic effort to abstain
wholly for three days had obliged him to use on the fourth more than
double the quantity to which of late he had been accustomed, would
have prevented the incautious conclusion, suggested by his table, that
De Quincey made use of laudanum but on two occasions after the
expiration of the fourth week.
Whatever may have been the length of time taken by De Quincey "in
unwinding to its last link the chain which bound" him, it is certain we

have no means of knowing it from any thing he has recorded. Be it
shorter or longer, his failure to state definitely the entire time employed
in his experiment occasioned me much and needless suffering. I
thought that if another could descend, without the experience of greater
misery than De Quincey records, from one hundred and thirty drops of
laudanum, equivalent to about five grains of opium, to nothing, in
thirty-four or five days, and in this brief period abandon a habit of more
than nine years' growth, a more resolved will might achieve the same
result in the same number of days, though the starting-point in respect
to aggregate quantity and to length of use was much greater. The object,
therefore, to be accomplished in my own case was to part company
forever with opium in thirty-five days, cost what suffering it might. On
the 26th of November, in a half-desperate, half-despondent temper of
mind, I commenced the long-descending gradus which I had rapidly
ascended so many years before. During this entire period the quantity
consumed had been pretty uniformly eighty grains of best Turkey
opium daily. Occasional attempts to diminish the quantity, but of no
long continuance, and occasional overindulgence during protracted bad
weather, furnished the only exceptions to the general uniformity of the
habit.
The experiment was commenced by a reduction the first day from
eighty grains to sixty, with no very marked change of sensations; the
second day the allowance was fifty grains, with an observable tendency
toward restlessness, and a general uneasiness; the third day a further
reduction of ten grains had diminished the usual allowance by one-half,
but with a perceptible increase in the sense of physical discomfort. The
mental emotions, however, were entirely jubilant The prevailing feeling
was one of hopeful exultation. The necessity for eighty grains daily had
been reduced to a necessity for only forty, and, therefore, one-half of
the dreaded task seemed accomplished. It was a great triumph, and the
remaining forty grains were a mere bagatelle, to be disposed of with
the same serene self-control that the first had been. A weight of
brooding melancholy was lifted from the