"From that day I have been habitually an opium eater. I am perfectly
sensible that the constant use of the pernicious drug has impaired my
health; but I cannot relinquish it. Some time since I formed a
resolution to abandon it, totally and at once; but had not strength
enough to carry it into practice. The very attempt to do so nearly
drove me to madness. The great load of mental agony which had been
lifted up and held aloof by the daily applied power of opium sank back
upon my heart like a crushing weight. Then, too, my physical sufferings
were extreme; an indescribable irritation, a general uneasiness
tormented me incessantly. I can only think of it as a total
disarrangement of the whole nervous system, the jarring of all the
thousand chords of sensitiveness, each nerve having its own particular
pain.--[ Essay on the Effects of Opium, London, 1763.]
"De Quincey, in his wild, metaphysical, and eloquent, yet, in many
respects, fancy sketch, considers the great evil resulting from the use
of opium to be the effect produced upon the mind during the hours of
sleep, the fearful inquietude of unnatural dreams. My own dreams have
been certainly of a different order from those which haunted me previous
to my experience in opium eating. But I cannot easily believe that
opium necessarily introduces a greater change in the mind's sleeping
operations, than in those of its wakefulness.
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