Part 3

It should have been stated before, that when the daily allowance had been reduced to six grains that quantity was divided into twelve pills, and that as this was diminished the size of the pills became gradually smaller till each of them only represented an eighth of a grain. As the daily amount of opium became smaller, although its general effect on the system was necessarily diminished, the conscious relief obtained from each of its fractional parts was for a few minutes more apparent than when these sub-divisions were first made. In this way it was possible so to time the effect as to throw their brief anodyne relief upon the dinner-hour or any other time when it might be convenient to have the agony of the struggle a little alleviated.

While I am not desirous of going into needless detail respecting all the particular phenomena of the process through which I was now passing, it may yet give the reader a more definite idea of the extremely nervous state to which I was reduced, if I mention that so nearly incapable had my hand become of holding a pen, that whenever it was absolutely necessary for me to write a few lines I could only manage it by taking the pen in one quivering hand, then grasp it with the other to give it a little steadiness, watching for an interval in the nervous twitching of the arm and hand, and then, making an uncertain dash at the paper, scrawl a word or two at long intervals. In this way I continued for several weeks to prepare the few brief notes I was obliged to write. My signature at this period I regard with some curiosity and more pride. It is certainly better than that of Guido Faux, affixed to his examination after torture, though it is hardly equal to the signature of Stephen Hopkins to the Declaration of Independence.

Christmas Day found me in a deplorable condition. No symptom of dissolving nature seemed alleviated; indeed the aggravation of the previous ones, especially of the already unendurable irritation of the stomach, was very obvious. In addition to this, the protracted wakefulness at night began to tell upon the brain, and I resolved to make my case known to a physician. I should have done this long before, but I had been deterred by two things--a long-settled conviction that all recovery from such habits must be essentially the patient's own resolute act, and my misfortune in never having found among my medical friends any one who had made the opium disease a special study, or who knew very much about it. The weather was excessively disagreeable, the heavens, about forty feet off, distilling the finest and most penetrating kind of moisture, while the limestone soil under the influence of the long rain had made walking almost impossible. With frantic impatience I waited until an omnibus made its appearance long after it was due, but crowded outside and in. The only unoccupied spot was the step of the carriage. How in my enfeebled condition I could hold on to this jolting standing-place for half an hour was a mystery I could not divine. With many misgivings I mounted the step, and by rousing all my energies contrived for a few minutes to retain my foot-hold. My knees seemed repeatedly ready to give way beneath me, my sight became dim, and my brain was in a whirl; but I still held on. I would gladly have left the omnibus, but I was certain that I should fall if I removed my hands from the frame-work of the door by which I was holding on. At length, a middle-aged Irish woman who had been observing me said, "You look very pale, Sir; I am afraid you are sick. You must take my seat." I thanked her, but told her I feared I had not strength enough to step inside. Two men helped me in, and a few minutes afterward an humble woman was kneeling in her wet clothing in the Church of St. ----, not the less penetrated, I trust, with the divine spirit of that commemorative day by her self-denying kindness to a stranger in his extremity. When the paved sidewalk was at last reached I started, after a few minutes' rest, in search of a physician. Purposely selecting the least-frequented streets, in dread of falling if obliged to turn from a direct course, as might be necessary in a crowded thoroughfare, I walked down to the office of the medical man whom I wished to consult; but when I arrived it seemed to me that my case was beyond human aid, and I walked on. I can, perhaps, find no better place than this in which to call the distinct attention of opium-eaters who may be induced to start out on their own reformation, to the all-important fact that no part of the body will be found so little affected by the rapid disuse of opium as the muscles used in walking. I am no physiologist, and do not pretend to explain it, but it is a most fortunate circumstance that in the general chaos and disorder of the rest of the system, the ability to walk, on which so much of the possibility of recovery rests, is by far the least affected of all the physical powers.

During the morning, however, my wretchedness drove me again to the office of the same physician. He listened courteously to my statement; said it was a very serious case, but outside of any reliable observation of his own, and recommended me to consult a physician of eminence residing in quite a different part of the city. He also expressed the hope, though I thought in no very confident tone, that I might be successful, and pretending to shut the door, watched my receding footsteps till I turned a distant corner. I now pass the house of the other physician to whom I was recommended to apply, several times every week, and I often moralize over the apprehension and anxieties with which I then viewed the two or three steps which led to his dwelling. When I arrived opposite his house I stopped and calculated the chances of mounting these steps without falling. I first rested my hand upon the wall and then endeavored to lift my feet upon the second step, but I had not the strength for such an exertion. I thought of crawling to the door, but this was hardly a decorous exhibition for the most fashionable street of the city, filled just then with gayly-dressed ladies. Why I did not ask some gentleman to aid me I can not now recall. I only recollect waiting for several minutes in blank dismay over the seeming impossibility of ever entering the door before me. Finally I went to the curbstone and walked as rapidly and steadily as possible to the lower step, and summoning all my energies made a plunge upward and fortunately caught the door-knob. The physician was at dinner, which gave me some time to recover myself from the agitation into which I had been thrown. After I had narrated my case with special reference to the suspicion of internal inflammation and its possible effect upon the brain, he assured me that no danger of the kind needs to be anticipated. He hoped I might succeed in my purpose, but thought it doubtful. An uncle of his own, a clergyman of some reputation, had died in making the effort. However, if I would take care of my own resolution, he would answer for my continued sanity. He prescribed some preparation of valerian and red pepper, I think, which I used for a week with little appreciable benefit. Finding no great relief from this prescription, or from those of other medical men whom for a few days about this time I consulted, and feeling a constant craving for something bitter, I at last prescribed for myself. Passing a store where liquor was sold, my eye accidentally rested upon a placard in the window which read "Stoughton's Bitters." This preparation gave me momentary relief, and the only appreciable relief I found in medicine during the experiment.

The nights now began to bring new apprehensions. A constant dread haunted my mind, in spite of the physician's assurances, that my brain might give way from the excitement under which I labored. I was especially afraid of some sudden paroxysm of mania, under the influence of which I might do myself unpremeditated injury. I never feared any settled purpose of self-injury, but I had become nervously apprehensive of possible wayward and maniacal impulses which might result in acts of violence.

My previous business had frequently detained me in the city till a late hour, sometimes as late as midnight. A part of the road that led to my house was quite solitary, with here and there a dwelling or store of the lowest kind. A railroad in process of construction had drawn to particular points on the road small collections of hovels, many of which were whisky-shops, and past these noisy drinking-places it was considered hazardous to walk alone at a late hour. In consequence of the bad reputation of this neighborhood I had purchased a large pistol which I kept ready for an emergency. Now, however, this pistol began to rest heavily upon my mind. The situation of my house was peculiarly favorable for the designs of any marauder. Directly back of it a solitary ravine extended for half a mile or more until it opened upon a populous suburb of the city. This suburb was largely occupied by persons engaged in navigation, or connected with boat-building, or by day-laborers, representing among them many nationalities. The winter of which I am writing was one of unusual stagnation in business and a hard one for the poor to get over. In the nervously susceptible state of my mind at this time, this ravine became a serious discomfort. When the stillness of night settled within and around the house, the rustling of leaves and the distant foot-falls in the ravine became distinctly audible. By some fancy of Judge ----, who built it, the house had no less than seven outside entrances. At intervals I would hear burglars at one of the doors, then at another, nearer or more remote: the prying of levers, the sound of boring, the stealthy footsteps, the carefully-raised window, the heavy breathing of an intruder. Then came the appalling sense of some strange presence, where no outward indication of such presence could be perceived, followed by gliding shaddos revealed by the occasional flicker of the waning fire.

Illusions of this nature served to keep the blood at feverheat during the hours of darkness. Night after night the pistol was placed beneath the pillow in readiness for these ghostly intruders. A few days, however, brought other apprehensions worse than those of thieves and burglars. The uncontrollable exasperation of the temper obliged me at length to draw the charge from the pistol, through fear of yielding to some sudden impulse of despair. I had also put out of reach my razors, a hammer, and whatever else might serve as an impromptu means of violence. I remember the grim satisfaction with which I looked upon the brass ornaments of the bedroom fire-place, and reflected that, if worse came to worst, I was not wholly without a resource with which to end my sufferings. For nearly a fortnight previously I had refrained from shaving, dreading I scarce knew what.

The day succeeding Christmas I rode to the city and walked the length of innumerable by-streets as my weakness would allow. When too exhausted to walk further, and looking for some place of rest, I observed a barber's sign suspended over a basement room. Fortunately the barber stood in the door-way and helped me to descend the half-dozen stone steps which led to his shop. I told the man to cut my hair, shave me, and shampoo my head. As he began his manipulations it seemed as though every separate hair was endowed with an intense vitality. It was impossible to refrain from mingled screams and groans as I repeatedly caught his arm and obliged him to desist. Luckily the barher was a man of sense, and by his extreme gentleness contrived in the course of an hour to calm down my excitement.

When he had finished his work the sense of relief and refreshment was astonishing. In this barber-shop I learned for the first time in what the perfection of earthly happiness consists. The sudden cessation of protracted and severe pain brings with it so exquisite a sense of enjoyment that I do not believe that successful ambition, or requited love, or the gratification of the wildest wishes for wealth, has a happiness to bestow at all comparable to the calm, contented, all-satisfying happiness that comes from a remission of intolerable pain. For the first time in a month I felt an emotion that could be called positively pleasant. As I left the shop I needed no assistance in reaching the sidewalk, and waiked the streets for an hour or two with something of an assured step.

Among other indications of the change taking place at this time in the system was the increased freezing perspiration perpetually going on, especially down the spine. This sense of dampness and icy coldness has now continued for many months, and for nearly a year was accompanied with a heavy cold. During the opium-eating years I do not remember to have been affected at all in this latter way; but a severe cold at this time settled upon the lungs, one indication of which was frequent sternutation, consequent apparently upon the inflammation of the mucous membrane.

In the entire week from Christmas to New Year's the progress in abandonment of opium was but a single grain. I am sure there was no want of resolution at this trying time. Day by day I exhausted all my resources in the vain endeavor to get on with half, three-quarters, even seven-eighths of a grain; but moans and groans, and biting the tongue till the blood came, as it repeatedly did, would not carry me over the twenty-four hours without the full grain. It seemed as if tortured nature would collapse under any further effort to bring the matter to a final issue.

Brandy and bitters after a few day's use had been abandoned, under the apprehension that they were connected with the tendency to internal inflammation which I have noticed as possibly affecting the brain. For a day or two I resorted to ale, but a disagreeable sweetness about it induced the substitution of Schenck beer, a weak kind of lager. This I found satisfied the craving for a bitter liquid, and it became for two or three weeks my chief drink. I should have mentioned that the day subsequent to the disuse of tobacco I had also given up tea and coffee, partly from a disposition to test the strength of my resolution, and partly from the belief that they might have some connection with a constant sensation in the mouth as if salivated with mercury. I soon learned that the real difficulty lay in the liver, and that this organ is powerfully affected in persons abandoning the long-continued use of opium. Had I known this fact at an earlier day it would have been of service in teaching me to control the diseased longing for rich and highly-seasoned food which had now become a passion. Eat as much as I would, however, the sense of hunger never left me; and this diseased craving, in ignorance of its injurious effects, was gratified in a way that might have taxed unimpaired powers of digestion.

At length the long-anticipated New Year's Day, on which I was to be emancipated forever from the tyranny of opium, arrived. For five weeks of such steady suffering as the wealth of all the world would not induce me to encounter a second time, I had kept my eye steadily fixed upon this day as the beginning of a new life. This was also the day on which I was to dine with my friend. As the dinner-hour approached it became evident that no opium meant no dinner, and a little later, that dinner or no dinner the opium was still a necessity. A half grain I thought might carry me through the day, but in this I was mistaken. As I lay upon my friend's sofa, suffering from a strange medley of hunger, pain, and weakness, it seemed that years must elapse before the system could regain its tone or the bodily sensations become at all endurable. Soon after dinner I felt obliged to take another half-grain. My humiliation in failing to triumph when and how I had resolved to do, was excessive. In spite of the strongest resolutions, I was still an opium-eater. I somehow felt that after all I had gone through I ought, to have succeeded. I was in no mood to speculate about the causes of the failure; it was enough to know that I had failed, and what was worse, that apparently nothing whatever had been gained in the last four days. While I certainly felt no temptation to give in, I thought it possible that some of the functions of the body, from the long use of opium, might have completely lost their powers of normal action, and that I should be obliged to continue a very moderate use of the drug during the remainder of my life. I saw, in dismal perspective, that small fractional part of the opium of years which was now represented by a single grain, looming up in endless distance, not unlike that puzzling metaphysical necessity in the perpetual subdivision of a unit, which, carried as far as it may be, always leaves a final half undisposed of. But in this I did myself injustice. I had really gained much in these few days, and the proof of it lay in the use of but half a grain on the day which succeeded New Year's. The third day of January, greatly to my surprise, a quarter-grain I found carried me through the twenty-four hours with apparently some slight remission of suffering.

As I now look back upon it, the worst of the experiment lay in the three weeks intervening between the 10th and the 31st of December. So far as mere pain of body was concerned, there was little to choose between the agony of one day and another; but the apprehension that insanity might set in, certainly aggravated the distress of the later stages of the trial. When a man knows that he is practicing self-control to the very utmost, and holding himself up steadily to his work in spite of the gravest discouragements, the consciousness that a large vacuum is being gradually formed in his brain is not exhilarating.

The next day--to me a very memorable one--the fourth of January, I sat for most of the day rocking backward and forward on a sofa or a chair, speaking occasionally a few words in a low sepulchral voice, but with the one bitter feeling, penetrating my whole nature, that come what would, on that day I would not.

When the clock struck twelve at midnight, and I knew that for the first time in many years I had lived for an entire day without opium, it excited no surprise or exultation. The capacity for an emotion of any kind was exhausted. I seemed as little capable of a sentiment as a man well could be, this side of his winding-sheet. I knew, of course, that in these forty days save one, I had worked out the problem, How to leave off opium, and that I had apparently attained a final deliverance: but it was several weeks before I appreciated with any confidence the completion of the task I had undertaken.

Although the opium habit was broken, it was only to leave me in a condition of much feebleness and suffering. I could not sleep, I could not sit quietly, I could not lie in any one posture for many minutes together. The nervous system was thoroughly deranged. Weak as I had become, I felt a continual desire to walk. The weather was unfavorable, but I managed to get several miles of exercise almost daily. But this relief was limited to four or five hours at most, and left the remainder of the day a weary weight upon my hands. The aversion to reading had become such that some months elapsed before I took up a book with any pleasure. Even the daily papers were more than I could well fix my attention upon, except in the briefest and most cursory way. Within a week, however, the sense of acute pain rapidly diminished, but the irritability, impatience, and incapacity to do any thing long remained unrelieved. The disordered liver became apparently more disordered with the progress of time, producing such effects upon the bowels as may with more fitness be told a physician than recorded here. The tonsils of the throat were swollen, the throat itself inflamed, while the chest was penetrated with what seemed like pulsations of prickly heat. There was also a sense of fullness in the muscles of the arms and legs which seemed to be permeated, if I may so express it, with heated electricity. The general condition of the nervous system will be sufficiently indicated by the statement that it was between three or four months before I could hold a pen with any degree of steadiness. Meantime, singular as it may seem, the appearance of health and vigor had astonishingly increased. I had gained more than twenty pounds in weight, partly, I suppose, the result of leaving off opium and tobacco, and partly the consequence of the insatiable appetite with which I was constantly followed. Within a month after the close of the opium strife, I was repeatedly congratulated upon my healthy, vigorous condition. Few men in the entire city bore about them more of the appearance of perfect health, and fewer still were probably in such a state of exhausted vitality.

During the time I was leaving off opium I had labored under the impression that the habit once mastered, a speedy restoration to health would follow. I was by no means prepared, therefore, for the almost inappreciable gain in the weeks which succeeded, and in some anxiety consulted a number of physicians, who each suggested in a timid way the trial, some of strychnine, some of valerian, some of lupuline, hyoscyamus, ignatia, belladonna, and what not. I do not know that I derived the slightest benefit from any of these prescriptions, or from any other therapeutic agency, unless I except the good effects for a few days of bitters, and of cold shower-baths from a tank in which ice was floating.

The most judicious of the medical gentlemen whose aid I invoked, was, I think, the one who replied to my inquiry for his bill, "What for? I have done you no good, and have learned more from you than you have from me."

This constitutes the entire history of my medical experience, and is mentioned as being the only, and a very small adjunct to the great remedy--patient, persistent, obstinate endurance. So exceeding slow has been the process toward the restoration of a natural condition of the system, that writing now, at the expiration of more than a year since opium was finally abandoned, it seems to me very uncertain when, if ever, this result will be reached. Between four and five months elapsed before I was at all capable of commanding my attention or controlling the nervous impatience of mind and body. I then assented to a proposal which involved the necessity of a good deal of steady work, in the hope that constant occupation would divert the attention from the nervousness under which I suffered and would restore the self-reliance which had so long failed me. It was a foolish experiment, and might have proved a fatal one. The business I had undertaken required a clear head and average health, and I had neither. The sleep was short and imperfect, rarely exceeding two or three hours. The chest was in a constant heat and very sore, while the previous bilious difficulties seemed in no way overcome. The mouth was parched, the tongue swollen, and a low fever seemed to have taken entire possession of the system, with special and peculiar exasperations in the muscles of the arms and legs.

The difficulty of thinking to any purpose was only equalled by the reluctance with which I could bring myself to the task of holding a pen. For a few weeks, however, the necessity of not wholly disgracing myself forced me on after a poor fashion; but at the end of two months I was a used-up man. I would sit for hours looking listlessly upon a sheet of paper, helpless of originating an idea upon the commonest of subjects, and with a prevailing sensation of owning a large emptiness in the brain, which seemed chiefly filled with a stupid wonder when all this would end.

More than an entire year has now passed, in which I have done little else than to put the preceding details into shape from brief memoranda made at the time of the experiment. While the physical agony ceased almost immediately after the opium was abandoned, the irritation of the system still continues. I do not know how better to describe my present state than by the use of language which professional men may regard as neither scientific nor accurate, but which will express, I hope, to unprofessional readers the idea I wish to convey, when I say that the entire system seems to me not merely to have been poisoned, but saturated with poison. Had some virus been transfused into the blood, which carried with it to every nerve of sensation a sense of painful, exasperating unnaturalness, the feeling would not, I imagine, be unlike what I am endeavoring to indicate.

ADDENDA.--At the time of writing the preceding narrative I had supposed that the entire story was told, and that the intelligent reader, should this record ever see the light, would naturally infer, as I myself imagined would be the case, that the unnatural condition of the body would soon become changed into a state of average health. In this I was mistaken. So tenacious and obstinate in its hold upon its victim is the opium disease, that even after the lapse of ten years its poisonous agency is still felt. Without some reference to these remoter consequences of the hasty abandonment of confirmed habits of opium-eating, the chief object of this narrative as a guide to others (who will certainly need all the information on the subject that can be given them) would fail of being secured. While unquestionably the heaviest part of the suffering resulting from such a change of habit belongs to the few weeks in which the patient is abandoning opium, it ought not to be concealed that this brief period by no means comprises the limit within which he will find himself obliged to maintain the most rigid watch over himself, lest the feeling of desperation which at times assaults him from the hope of immediate physical restoration disappointed and indefinitely postponed, should drive him back to his old habits. Indeed, with some temperaments, the greatest danger of a relapse comes in, not during the process of abandonment, but after the habit has been broken. Great bodily pain serves only to rouse up some natures to a more earnest strife, and, as their sufferings become more intense, the determination not to yield gains an unnatural strength. The mind is vindicating itself as the master of the body. While in this state, tortures and the fagot are powerless to extort groans or confessions from the racked or half-consumed martyr. Many a sufferer has borne the agony of the boots or the thumb-screw without flinching, whose courage has given way under the less painful but more unendurable punishment of prolonged imprisonment. In the one case all a man's powers of resistance are roused; he feels that his manhood is at stake, and he endures as men will endure when they see that the question how far they are their own masters, is at issue. There are, I think, a great number of men and women who would go unflinchingly to the stake in vindication of a principle, whose resolution, somewhere in the course of a long, solitary, and indefinite imprisonment, would break down into a discreditable compromise of opinions for which they were unquestionably willing to die.

In the same way a man will for a time endure even frightful suffering in relinquishing a pernicious habit, while he may fail to hold up his determination against the assaults of the apparently never-ending irritation, discomfort, pain, and sleeplessness which may be counted on as being, sometimes at least, among the remoter consequences of the struggle in which he has engaged. I wish it, however, distinctly understood that I do not suppose that the experience of others whose use of opium had been similar to my own, would necessarily correspond to mine in all or even in many respects. Opium is the Proteus of medicine, and science has not yet succeeded in tearing away the many masks it wears, nor in tracing the marvellously diversified aspects it is capable of assuming. Among many cases of the relinquishment of opium with which I have been made acquainted, nothing is more perplexing than the difference of the specific consequences, as they are exhibited in persons of different temperaments and habits. For such differences I do not pretend to account. That is the business of the thoroughly educated physician, and no unprofessional man, however wide his personal experience, has the right to dogmatize or even to express with much confidence settled opinions upon the subject. My object will be fully attained if I succeed in giving a just and truthful impression of the more marked final consequences of the hasty disuse of opium in this single case, leaving it to medical men to explain the complicated relations of an opium-saturated constitution to the free and healthy functions of life.

In my own case, the most marked among the later consequences of the disease of opium, some of which remain to the present time and seem to be permanently engrafted upon the constitution, have been these:

1. Pressure upon the muscles of the limbs and in the extremities, sometimes as of electricity apparently accumulated there under a strong mechanical force.

2. A disordered condition of the liver, exhibiting itself in the variety of uncomfortable modes in which that organ, when acting irregularly, is accustomed to assert its grievances.

3. A sensitive condition of the stomach, rejecting many kinds of food which are regarded by medical men as simple and easy of digestion.