Chapter 16

I had now firmly resolved to free myself from my fatal habit; and the very day I reached home I began to diminish the quantity I was then taking by one grain per day. I received the most careful attention, and every thing was done that could add to my comfort and alleviate the sufferings I must inevitably undergo. Until I had arrived at seventeen and a half grains a day I experienced but little uneasiness, and my digestive organs acquired or regained strength very rapidly. All constipation had vanished. My skin became moist and more healthy, and my spirits instead of being depressed became equable and cheerful. No visions haunted my sleep. I could not sleep, however, more than two or three hours at a time, and from about 3 A.M. until 8--when I took my opium--I was restless and troubled with a gnawing, twitching sensation in the stomach. From seventeen grains downward my torment (for by that word alone can I characterize the pangs I endured) commenced. I could not rest, either lying, sitting, or standing. I was compelled to change my position every moment, and the only thing that relieved me was walking about the country. My sight became weak and dim; the gnawing at my stomach was perpetual, resembling the sensation caused by ravenous hunger; but food, though I ate voraciously, would not relieve me. I also felt a sinking in the stomach, and such a pain in the back that I could not straighten myself up. A dull, constant, aching pain took possession of the calves of my legs, and there was a continual jerking motion of the nerves from head to foot. My head ached, my intellect was terribly weakened and confused, and I could not think, talk, read, nor write. To sleep was impossible, until by walking from morning till night I had so thoroughly tired myself that pain could not keep me awake, although I was so weak that walking was misery to me. And yet under all these _dèsagrèmens_ I did not feel dejected in spirit; although I became unable to walk, and used to lie on the floor and roll about in agony for hours together. I should certainly have taken opium again if the chemist had not, by my mother's instructions, refused to sell it. I became worse every day, and it was not till I had entirely left off the drug--two months nearly--that any alleviation of my suffering was perceptible. I gradually but very slowly recovered my strength both of mind and body, though it was long before I could read or write, or even converse. My appetite was too good; for though while an opium-eater I could not endure to taste the smallest morsel of fat, I now could eat at dinner a pound of bacon which had not a hair's-breadth of lean in it. Previously to my arrival in Kenilworth an intimate friend of mine had been ruined--reduced at once from affluence to utter penury by the villainy of his partner, to whom he had entrusted the whole of his business, and who had committed two forgeries for which he was sentenced to transportation for life. In consequence of this event, my friend, who was a little older than myself and had been about twelve months married, determined to leave his young wife and child and seek to rebuild his broken fortunes in Canada. When he informed me that such was his plan I resolved to accompany him, and immediately commenced preparations for my voyage. I was not however ready, not having been able so soon to collect the sum necessary, when he was obliged to leave, and as I could not have him for my companion, I altered my course and took my passage for New York, in the vain expectation of obtaining a better income here, where the ground was comparatively unoccupied, than in London, where there were hundreds of men as well qualified as myself, dependent on literature for their support. I need not add how lamentably I was disappointed. The first inquiries I made were met by advice to endeavor to obtain a livelihood by some other profession than authorship. I could get no employment as a reporter, and the applications I addressed to the editors of several of the daily newspapers received no answer. My prospects appeared as gloomy as they could well be, and my spirits sunk beneath the pressure of the anxious cares which now weighed so heavily upon me. I was alone in a strange country, without an acquaintance into whose ear I might pour the gathering bitterness of my blighted hopes. I was also much distressed by the intense heat of July, which kept me from morning till night in a state much like that occasioned by a vapor bath. I was so melancholy and hopeless that I really found it necessary to have recourse to brandy or opium. I preferred the latter, although to ascertain the difference, merely as a philosophical experiment, I took rather copious draughts of the former also. But observe; I did not intend ever again to become the slave of opium. I merely proposed to take three or four grains a day until I should procure some literary engagement, and until the weather became more cool. All my efforts to obtain such engagement were in vain; and I should undoubtedly have sunk into hopeless despondency had not a gentleman (to whom I had brought an order for a small sum of money, twice the amount of which he had insisted on my taking), perceiving how injuriously I was affected by my repeated disappointments, offered me two hundred dollars to write "Passages from the Life of an Opium-eater," in two volumes. I gladly accepted this disinterested offer, but before I had written more than two or three sheets I became disgusted with the subject. I attempted to proceed, but found that my former facility in composition had deserted me; that, in fact, I could not write. I now discovered that the attempt to leave off opium again would be one of doubtful result. I had increased my quantum to forty grains. I again became careless and inert, and I believe that the short time that had elapsed since I had broken the habit in England had not been sufficient to allow my system to free itself from the poison which had been so long undermining its powers. I could not at once leave it off; and in truth I was not very anxious to do so, as it enabled me to forget the difficulties of the situation in which I had placed myself; while I knew that with regained freedom the cares and troubles which had caused me again to flee to my destroyer for relief, would press upon my mind with redoubled weight. I remained in Brooklyn until November. Since then, I have resided in the city, in great poverty, frequently unable to procure a dinner, as the few dollars I received from time to time scarcely sufficed to supply me with opium. Whether I shall now be able to leave off opium, God only knows!

OPIUM AND ALCOHOL COMPARED.

The manuscript of the narrative which follows was placed in the hands of the compiler by a physician of Philadelphia who for many years had shown great kindness to its writer, in the endeavor to cure him of his pernicious habits. The writer seems from childhood to have been cursed with an excessive sensibility, and an unusual constitutional craving for excitement, coupled with an infirm and unreliable will. The habit of daily dependence upon alcohol appears to have been established for years before the use of opium was commenced; and the latter was begun chiefly for the purpose of substituting the excitement of the drug in place of the excitement furnished by brandy and wine. That any human being can permanently substitute the daily use of the one in place of the daily use of the other is more than doubtful. Attempts of this kind are not unfrequently made, but the result is uniformly the same--a double tyranny is established which no amount of resolution is sufficient to conquer. This fact is so forcibly illustrated in this autobiography, that although it is chiefly a story of suffering from the use of alcoholic stimulants, its insertion here may serve as a caution to that class of persons, not inconsiderable in number, who are tempted to substitute one ruinous habit in place of another.

I am inclined to think I must have been born, if not literally with a propensity to _stimulus_, at least with a susceptibility to fall readily into the use of it; for my ancestors, so far as I know, all used alcohol, though none of them, I believe, died drunkards. One of my earliest recollections is that of seeing the tumbler of sling occasionally partaken of by the elders of the family, even before breakfast, and of myself with the other children being sometimes gratified with a spoonful of the beverage or the sugar at the bottom. Paregoric, too--combining two of the most dangerous of all substances, alcohol and opium--was a favorite medicine of my excellent mother, and in all the little ailments of childhood was freely administered. So highly thought she of it that on my leaving home at fifteen for Cambridge University she put a large vial of it in my trunk, with the injunction to take of it, if ever sick.

In my young days I saw alcohol used everywhere. How in those days any body failed of the drunkard's grave seems hardly less than miraculous. How I myself escaped becoming inebriate for more than twenty-five years, is with my organization, a deep mystery.

I can remember, when quite young, occasionally drinking--as I saw every body else do, boys as well as men, and even women--and I recollect also being two or three times overcome with liquor, to my infinite horror and shame not less than bodily suffering. At fifteen, as I said, I entered Harvard University, perfectly free from the _habit_ of drinking as from all other bad habits. Here too, as everywhere before, I saw alcohol flowing copiously, the most prevalent kind being wine.

On Exhibition and Commencement Days, every student honored with a "part" was accustomed at his room to make his friends and acquaintances free of the cake-basket and especially of the wine-cup. A good deal of wine and punch too was drank at the private "Blows" (so called) of the students, at the meetings of their various clubs, at their military musterings, and other like occasions. At all such times there was more or less intoxication. I can remember being a good deal disordered with wine two or three times during my four college years, and I have no doubt I was considerably affected by it more times than these; still scholastic ambition, somewhat diligent habits of study, straitened means, and the want of any special inclination for artificial stimulus carried me through college without my having contracted any habit of drinking or having grown to depend at all upon stimulants.

But deteriorating causes had been at work, and though the volcano had not burst forth as yet, the material had been silently gathering through these four seemingly peaceful years. In the winter of my sixteenth or seventeenth year, after suffering several days from severe toothache, I was induced by my landlady, a pipe-smoker, to try tobacco as a remedy. The result of this trial, which proved effectual, was that partly from the old notion that tobacco was a teeth- preservative, and partly, I suppose, because the taste was hereditary, I fell at once into the habit of tobacco-chewing, which I continued without intermission for eleven years. In this abominable practice I exercised no moderation: indeed in any practice of this kind it has seemed constitutional with me to go to excess, and unnatural to pursue a middle course. None at all or too much was the alternative exacted by my organization. By consequence, the perpetual, unmeasured waste of saliva induced by using such immoderate quantities of this weed must speedily have exhausted a constitution not endowed with unusual vital energies. As it was I must have received deep injury. I often felt faintness and languor, though I did not or would not admit what now I have no doubt of--that this vegetable was in fault.

At nineteen, graduating at Cambridge, I took and kept for the three following years an academy in a near neighboring town. Here I soon began to suffer (what I now suppose) the ill effects of the false education and false living (the tobacco-chewing, physical inertness, mental partialness, and the rest) of long foregoing years. I began to suffer greatly from gloom and depression of spirits. Short fits of morbid gayety and long stretches of dullness and darkness made up the present, while the future looked almost wholly black. I had indeed been afflicted so long as I could remember with seasons of low spirits, but _these_ glooms, for depth and long continuance, transcended any thing I had ever experienced before. On festive occasions, at which I was often present, I was accustomed to take a glass or half-glass of wine with and like the rest; but other than this, I used no stimulus and never had thought of keeping any at my lodgings. In fact, so little was I _seasoned_ in this way that half a glass of ordinary wine was enough to elevate my spirits many degrees above their usual pitch. I know not why it never occurred to me to use habitually what I found occasionally to be such a relief. A few months after commencing school I attended with a party of friends the celebration of the Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. The orator was exceedingly eloquent; the occasion one of great enthusiasm; and what with my intense previous excitement of mind, what with my unseasoned brain, and what with the universal example of the wise and good about me, I took so much wine at the public dinner as to be completely intoxicated, and was only able after three or four hours of sleep to attend the Pilgrim Ball. My shame, remorse, and horror on this occasion was so far salutary that without any special resolution I was for a long time after, a total abstinent. In fact this monitory influence lasted with more or less force for six or seven years. But the gloom and depression before spoken of came to a crisis. About a year after my leaving college I broke down with a severe attack of dyspepsia. A weight pressing continually on my chest, palpitation of the heart, sleeplessness by night, or dreams that robbed sleep of all repose, debility, languor, and increased gloom--such are some of the symptoms that hung oppressively upon me for more than a year.

Under these circumstances I took a physician's advice. By his orders I swallowed I know not how many bottles of bitters. Whether from their effect or from Nature's curative power in despite of them, my ailments at last mostly disappeared; but to this very hour I have been more or less subject to the same physical inertness and unexcitability, low spirits, and many like symptoms. No unexperienced person can imagine what a life it is to be thus physically but half alive. The temptation is incessant to raise by artificial helps the physical tone, in order thus to attain activity and energy of mind. My only wonder is that I did not sooner resort to what would at least give temporary relief to the depression and torpor from which I suffered so much and so long.

After keeping school three years, being the last of the three a member of the Cambridge Divinity School, I passed two years at that school and was licensed to preach. My life there was the same false, unnatural one it had been in college--much study and no bodily exercise, a few faculties active and the greater number exercised scarce at all. All this while, with the exception of tobacco, I used no stimulants except on rare occasions, and then always in moderation.

In August, 1829, I was licensed as a preacher by the Boston Ministerial Association. In the December following I was ordained a minister at Lynn, Mass. In May, 1830, I was married, and in the succeeding autumn became a housekeeper. Immediately on becoming an ordained clergyman I procured one or two demijohns of wine as a preparative for hospitality to my clerical brethren and to visitants generally. Such was the custom universally, and in various ways I was given to understand that I too must adopt it. Keeping wine at home now for the first time, I tasted it doubtless oftener than ever before, though still not habitually or with any approach to excess. Furthermore, a member of my family, in debilitated health and a dyspeptic, was ordered by the family physician, one of the most distinguished of the Boston Faculty, to take brandy and water with dinner as a tonic. A demijohn of brandy therefore took its place in the closet beside the demijohn of wine already there, and on the daily dinner-table was set a decanter of this liquid fire. For myself I had as already intimated never perfectly recovered from my ancient dyspeptic attack, nor was my present way of life very favorable to health. To replenish this waste, a good deal of bodily exercise was needed, but of such exercise I took scarce any at all.

It was then no uncommon thing for a minister to sit down on Saturday evenings with a pot of green tea as strong as lye, or of coffee black as ink, and a box of cigars beside him--drinking at the one and puffing at the other all or most of the night through--and under the excitement of these nerve-rasping substances trace rapidly on paper the words which next day were to thrill or melt his listeners. A final cup of tea or coffee, extra strong, and a last cigar before entering the pulpit, gave him that fervor and unction of manner so indispensable to eloquence. His theme, perhaps, was intemperance; and with nerves tingling from the action of liquids which no swine will drink, and of the plant which no swine will eat, he would portray most vividly the terrible ruin wrought by intoxicating drink. Do not believe, however, that in all this he was dishonest or hypocritical; he was merely self-ignorant--blind to the fact that in condemning the alcoholic inebriate he was by every word condemning himself as well. This ignorance, however, could not obviate the effects of such hideous outrage on the physical laws. I have dwelt on these points partly for their intrinsic truth and importance, and partly as hearing upon and explaining my own case. In ill health, languid and restless from the causes pertaining to my then condition, I found in brandy or wine a temporary relief for that languor and sedative for that restlessness. When necessitated to write, and the mind was dull because the body was sluggish, instead of seeking the needed life in tea and coffee and tobacco-smoking, I found it more readily in brandy or wine. In short, I began somewhat to depend on these stimulants for the excitement I required for my work. I hardly need say I dreamed of neither wrong nor danger in so doing, and it was yet a good while before a case of intoxication awoke me from this false security. Thus three years passed, at the close of which I removed to Brookline for the health of a friend apparently declining in consumption. Just before leaving I cast away the tobacco which I had used largely for ten or eleven years. The struggle was a hard one, and the faintness and uneasy cravings which long tormented me operated, I think, as a temptation to replace the lost stimulus by increased quantities of alcoholic stimulus. Under these circumstances I went to Brookline in the beginning of February, 1833, and for three or four months I shut myself up as sole attendant and nurse of a sick friend, apparently dying. I had no external employment compelling my attention; there were no outward objects to call me off from my infirmities and uneasy sensations. I was alone with all these--alone with sickness and coining death--alone with a gloomy present and a clouded future--and the bottle stood near, promising relief. It is not very strange that I resorted oftener than before to its treacherous comfort, and became more than ever accustomed to depend upon it. I believe, however, that only once during these months was I positively overcome by it, and I was very ready to cheat myself into the belief that other causes were in fault besides, and as much as alcohol. The ensuing summer I spent partly in Cambridge and partly in travelling with the invalid who still survived; and with health considerably improved I continued stimulus, though I think in rather less quantities than in the winter preceding. Once, however, I was badly intoxicated with port wine, and so ill as greatly to alarm my friends and induce them to call in a physician, who administered a powerful emetic. Whether or not he understood the nature of my ailment I never knew. My friends I think did not, and I was very willing to cheat myself into the belief that the wine thus affected me because I was ill from other causes.

At the close of August of this year I went to Brooklyn, New York, to preach for a few Sundays to a handful of persons who had just united to attempt forming a new religious society. I remained through the winter following. A society was gathered; I was installed over it, and there continued till the summer of 1837. These four years were to me tremendous years. They seem to me, in looking back, like a long, sick, feverish dream. Even now I can hardly but shudder at the remembrance of glooms of midnight blackness and sufferings that mock all endeavors at description: for it absolutely appears to me on the review that not for one week of these four years was I a free, healthful, sober, man; not one week but I was rent by a fierce conflict between "the law of the members and the law of the mind." How it was I executed the amount I did, of intellectual labor--how it was I accomplished the results I did, Is to me an impenetrable mystery. I began to address in a hired school-house a handful of persons, having most of them but a slight mutual acquaintance, and in my farewell discourse I addressed a fair-sized, closely-united congregation assembled in their own conveniently-spacious church, with the organization and all the customary belongings of the oldest worshiping societies. Not one Sunday of that time was I disenabled by my fatal habits to perform the customary offices; but I did not understand my condition in any thing like its reality as now I look back upon it. My actual state was known to but very few in its entireness--I may say to absolutely none of those I daily companied with--and I did at the close of that period receive an honorable dismissal at my own request, a request made for reasons distinct from this; nor between myself and people, or any of them, was there ever a word exchanged on this subject from first to last. "Truth is strange, stranger than fiction."

I shall not attempt going through these years in detail. I went to Brooklyn with the habit of depending on alcohol to a considerable extent for physical tone and mental excitement, though not with the _habit_ of losing my balance thereby.

It was some time after establishing myself in New York before I became at all awake to my condition. At considerable intervals I had two or three attacks of convulsionary fits. My physician gave them some name--I hardly remember what--but he did not specify the cause. I now understand them to have been intoxication fits. I suspected then that alcohol had some connection with them, and I was so far aroused to this and other evils of my way of life that I attempted total abstinence. But besides a host of uneasy sensations, I at once experienced such a lack of bodily strength and of mental life and activity that to think or write, or apply myself to my tasks generally, I found impossible.