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Opium and Addiction

Laudanum is a tincture of opium dissolved in alcohol. It was once widely used as a ‘cure-all’ because it contains high levels of morphine and codeine, which make it a very effective analgesic. It also has a very relaxing effect on the mind due to its narcotic content. In the early 19th century, many people suffered from chronic and ultimately fatal ailments, such as tuberculosis (consumption) and syphilis, for which there were no known cures. Laudanum became the medication of choice, as it alleviated the pain and soothed the mind, enabling people to continue functioning while their diseases gradually took away their lives.

In those days, laudanum contained raw opium, so that it was a cocktail of many compounds exuded by the opium poppy. It is still used in some countries for the treatment of people in severe pain due to terminal illnesses, such as cancer, but these days the drug is processed so that the solution does not contain undesirable chemicals. In its processed form, it is more commonly referred to as tincture of opium rather than laudanum. The term ‘laudanum’ is derived from the word ‘ladanum’ which is an aromatic resin obtained from the rock rose (Cistus ladanifer). As opium is the dried sap of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum), pharmacists saw a similarity between the two. The species name of the opium poppy – somniferum – alludes to the sleep-inducing properties of the drug.

Confessions of an English Opium Eater

Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821) is, as it suggests, a confessional on the effects that laudanum had on the author. This is because opium has the unfortunate quality of being highly addictive, both physiologically and psychologically. The result is that the patient becomes a user and craves higher and higher doses as their tolerance for the drug increases. Opium addiction, through the administration of laudanum, became quite a problem. People needed the drug to cope with their afflictions, but its use sent them into a spiraling dependency that, in turn, caused other problems due to the opium’s side effects. These included erratic and unreasonable behaviour, malnutrition due to vomiting and loss of appetite, and general self-neglect. Of course, the problem was also compounded by the fact that alcohol was the solvent, leading to alcoholism alongside the opium addiction.

Thomas de Quincey began taking laudanum to treat his neuralgia, a condition resulting in spasms of pain along nerves, typically in the head and face. It is caused by damaged or malfunctioning nerves that prompt the brain to feel phantom aches and pains, which can be quite debilitating. It may be that childhood illness or injury caused his nervous system to begin these intermittent bouts of pain, but de Quincey was probably also a hypochondriac in nature, thereby exaggerating the problem in his own mind and making the neuralgia partly psychosomatic.

De Quincey took laudanum for the first time at the age of 19. For the next eight years, he used laudanum as a recreational drug, whenever he decided that his condition warranted a dose. He then suffered a tragedy when his friend Catherine, the youngest daughter of William Wordsworth, died, closely followed by his son, Thomas, in the same year: 1812. This prompted de Quincey to use laudanum on a daily basis, and he soon entered into full-blown opium addiction, which would dog him for the rest of his life. He displayed all the classic behaviours associated with modern-day heroin addiction. He would go into binges of consumption and then try to rehabilitate himself by attempting to kick the habit, always without prolonged success.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is another famous opium addict of the same era as de Quincey. Coleridge was the elder of the two, by a dozen years, and had published The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in 1798, which greatly inspired de Quincey. They met in 1807, and an acquaintance was begun rather than a proper friendship – both seeing a connection through their shared drug habit. When the de Quincey published Confessions of an English Opium Eater, a peculiar literary rivalry began. They each published magazine articles that were virtually interchangeable in theme, style and tone, almost as if they were binary stars, caught in one another’s gravitational field. They orbited one another in this way for a while, as if obsessed by the self-image they saw in the other.

Both Coleridge and de Quincey were among William Wordsworth’s circle of friends. Wordsworth was disapproving of their use of opium because of the decline in condition and mood that it brought about. Anxiety, depression and fatigue were very evident symptoms. Wordsworth was a vigorous man who made the most of life and enjoyed outdoor pursuits, such as trekking. Wordsworth believed that opium addiction brought out the worst in people. However, because of its benefits, it would be a long time before the use of opium would be outlawed, at a time before the evolution of more specific remedies. It was banned in the US in 1905. In Britain it was more complicated, due to the perception that opiate addictions were medical conditions rather than condemnable behaviour. In 1926 the Rolleston Act allowed general practitioners to prescribe opiates in Britain if they saw fit, so that addicts were able to continue with their habits.

About the Author

De Quincey had an unusual start in life. His father died when he was young and his mother had a peculiar idea of the best way to school him. Instead of sending him to the best school, she did the opposite. She actually removed him from one school, where he was doing too well, and sent him to an inferior school to encourage him to work harder and develop a sense of self-reliance – an approach that many modern parents might do well to follow, as it worked in that regard. De Quincey became a free-spirited and self-educated character, if a little eccentric in nature, with a clear mission in mind to follow Wordsworth and Coleridge into the world of poetry and literature. It would be fair to say that he possessed an ‘artistic temperament’: naturally compelled towards self-expression, with an accompanying disregard for his own well-being.

It is true that he was something of a self-imagined pariah, but that too was common in the creative type, due to the acute awareness of being different and having heightened sensibilities about the difficulty with conforming and becoming marginalized by society. This probably added to de Quincey’s inclination to take opium, as a means of escaping his inner demons as much as anything else. He effectively lived the entirety of his adult life with laudanum as his faithful companion, always there to dull his senses.

Confessions of an English Opium Eater was heavily coloured by a period in which de Quincey was homeless and living on the streets of London, which he viewed as the seminal moment in his life, following his uncertain childhood. It was this episode that led to his opium eating, which, in turn, opened his mind to his literary potential. As such, he was equally cursed and blessed, as he saw it, and this is really the central theme of the book – the pros and cons of opium addiction. The key sections of the tome are entitled The Pleasures of Opium and The Pains of Opium, in which he tries to address a balanced and fair view.

In this work, de Quincey attempts to be objective by the admittance of his gains and losses. It was this stark honesty that made the book immediately popular, although de Quincey chose to publish the book anonymously, as he wasn’t at all certain of what the reaction to the book would be. The truth is that he had inadvertently tapped into the humanity of the British public. Like so many since, he found that people were willing to accept and embrace him for the candour with which he detailed his flaws as a person. People like to see qualities in celebrities that they can identify with because, as any evolutionary psychologist will tell you, we evolved as social apes and we like to identify moral and ethical allies. Thus, de Quincey set a precedent that opened the way for the introspective autobiography by demonstrating the people do want to know about the insalubrious and sordid truths of the lives of others.