The Opium Habit | Page 7

to any strife which human nature is
called upon to make in overcoming not merely an obstinate habit but
the fascination of a long-entranced imagination. Up to this time I had
taken the opium as I had always been accustomed to do, in a single
dose on awaking in the morning. I now, however, divided the daily
allowance into two portions, and after a day or two into four, and then
into single grains. The chief advantage which followed this subdivision
of the dose was a certain relief to the mind, which for a few days had
become fully aware of the power which misery possesses of
lengthening out the time intervening between one alleviation and

another, and which shrank from the weary continuance of an entire
day's painful and unrelieved abstinence from the accustomed
indulgence. The first three days from the commencement of this grain
by grain descent was marked by obviously increased impatience with
any thing like contradiction or opposition, by an absolute aversion to
reading, and by a very humiliating sense of the fact that the vis vitae
had somehow become pretty thoroughly eliminated from both mind
and body. Still, when night came, as with long-drawn steps it did come,
there was the consciousness that something had been gained, and that
this daily gain, small as it was, was worth all it had cost. The tenth day
of the experiment had reduced my allowance to sixteen grains. The
effect of this rapid diminution of quantity was now made apparent by
additional symptoms. The first tears extorted by pain since childhood
were forced out as by some glandular weakness. Restlessness, both of
body and mind, had become extreme, and was accompanied with a
hideous and almost maniacal irritability, often so plainly without cause
as sometimes to provoke a smile from those who were about me.
For a few days a partial alleviation from too minute attention to the
pains of the experiment were found in vigorous horseback exercise.
The friend to whose serviceableness in pecuniary matters I have
already alluded, offered me the use of a saddle-horse. The larger of the
two animals which I found in his Stable was much too heroic in
appearance for me in my state of exhaustion to venture upon. Besides
this, his Roman nose and severe gravity of aspect somehow reminded
me, whenever I entered his stall, of the late Judge ----, to whose
Lectures on the Constitution I had listened in my youth, and in my then
condition of moral humiliation I felt the impropriety of putting the
saddle on an animal connected with such respectable associations. No
such scruples interfered with the use of the other animal, which was
kept chiefly, I believe, for servile purposes. He was small and
mean-looking--his foretop and mane in a hopeless tangle, with
hay-seed on his eyelids, and damp straws scattered promiscuously
around his body.
Inconsiderable as this animal was, both in size and action, he was
almost too much for me, in the weak state to which I was now reduced.
This much, however, I owe him; disreputable-looking as he was, he
was still a something upon whidi my mind could rest as a point of

diversion from myself--a something outside of my own miseries. At
this time the sense of physical exhaustion had become so great that it
required an effort to perform the most common act. The business of
dressing was a serious tax upon the energies. To put on a coat, or draw
on a boot, was no light labor, and was succeeded by such a feeling of
prostration as required the morning before I could master sufficient
energy to venture upon the needed exercise. The distance to my friend's
stable was trifling. Sometimes I would find there the negro man to
whose care the horses were entrusted, but more frequently he was
absent. A feeling of humiliation at being seen by any one at a loss how
to mount a horse of so diminutive proportions, would triumph over the
sense of bodily weakness whenever he was present to bridle and saddle
him. Whenever he was not at hand the task of getting the saddle on the
pony's back was a long and arduous one. As for lifting it from its hook
and throwing it to its place, I could as easily have thrown the horse
itself over the stable. The only way in which it could be effected was by
first pushing the saddle from its hook, checking its fall to the floor by
the hand, and then resting till the violent action of the heart had
somewhat abated; next, with occasional failures, to throw it over the
edge of the low manger; then an interval of panting rest. Shortening the
halter so far as to bring the pony's head close