Opium, Morphine, and Heroin

As a “companion” to The Annotated Hashish Eater, is the Hashish Eater’s Companion.  However, as a practical matter, this volume is mostly about opium and not hashish.  It includes various articles on opium, including Thomas DeQuincey’s famous Confessions of An English Opium Eater (in its entirety) which served to inspire Ludlow to write his own Hashish Eater.

Opium was the original deal.  Opium essentially consists of a mixture of codeine and morphine.  Morphine is the underlying drug.  Laudanum is a mixture of alcohol and opium. 

Heroin came later.  Diacetylmorphine is the chemical name, tradenamed as heroin by Bayer.  It was originally synthesized in 1874, then developed into a commercially marketable drug in 1897, and sold from 1898 to 1910 – ironically, as a non-addictive alternative to morphine, although they soon realized that error.  It was banned in 1924.

Unlike Ludlow, whose hashish consumption was purely recreational, DeQuincey claims his opium habit stemmed from various painful and uncurable medical conditions, although both authors cite Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the author of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Khan”.   Coleridge’s own addiction to opium was well known to both of them.   What’s strange is that both were aware of Coleridge’s conditions before beginning their own consumption.

Back in the nineteenth century, up until the early twentieth century, morphine was the most powerful painkiller.  For many suffering from painful, incurable conditions, morphine was the only drug that worked.  Many soldiers were given morphine for their wounds and later became addicts.  “Heroes For Sale” (1933) describes a WWI US soldier given morphine by well-meaning German doctors and ultimately becoming addicted.  Oddly enough, back in 2000 I had back pain, so I was given one shot of morphine at the E.R. for it.  It did the job well.  But I only had that one shot, and did not turn into an addict.

In addition to killing pain and inducing a general state of intense euphoria, opium produced extremely lucid and colorful dreams, powerful enough to be remembered and recorded, thus Coleridge’s inspiration and muse.   However, the horrendous chemical dependence arguably offset this benefit.  Opium becomes a necessary ingredient for sustained life.  At that time there was no receptor substitute like methadone to help an addict wean off the drug.  Insomnia, chronic constipation, issues with appetite, skin complexion, in fact so many different problems that the addict’s body is taken over by the drug with irreversible physiological damage. 

Ludlow actually echoed this in his own stories.   Those who condemn the opium addict have no idea what the person is going through.  The drug is so powerful, the addiction and dependence so thorough, that the addict is consumed with the need to get more.  He will lie, cheat, steal, do whatever it takes, to friends, family, loved ones, anyone, to get more.   He is no longer in control of himself.

Ludlow himself described not only his own difficulty in trying to kick the habit, but his proposal for a rehab center – in third quarter of the nineteenth century – and efforts on his part to assist others in doing so.  Infrequent recreational use might not necessarily lead to addiction – Ludlow describes different patients having different levels of dependence – but after a certain point, there is no going back.   The withdrawal symptoms become so close to lethal that as a practical matter, the person is better off sustaining a modest habit than getting off the drug completely.  

At this point the victim is doomed to this for the remainder of his life.  Ludlow described this as a very slow form of suicide, oddly enough a sentiment echoed in Ozzy Osbourne’s song “Suicide Solution”.  But for all of Ozzy’s idiocy and substance issues, he was wise enough not to even dabble with heroin, much less become addicted to it: his song refers to alcoholism. 

By the twentieth century, opium and laudanum were replaced by heroin.  Several prominent rock stars got themselves hooked on heroin.  Of these, Sid Vicious (Sex Pistols) and Layne Staley (Alice in Chains) ultimately died.  David Crosby, of CSN/CSNY, described heroin (and other hard drugs aside from marijuana) as “a massive waste of time”.  The singer for Sublime, Bradley Nowell, is the most egregious example of this idiocy.  He deliberately got himself hooked on heroin because he believed it would help his musical inspiration and ability.  Naturally he learned what all the previous addicts learned:  it’s a losing bargain.  After a few cycles of clean and dirty, he finally fatally overdosed on the drug in 1996.

William S. Burroughs, the author of Naked Lunch and a member of the beatnik group that included Allen Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac, was an addict.  Much of Naked Lunch is a vivid depiction of heroin addiction and the extraordinary lengths to which an addict will go to procure more of the drug.  The appendixes to the latest edition include an essay by the author on heroin rehab, i.e. what works and what doesn’t.

By now there are several movies handling this topic, but “Trainspotting”, with Ewan McGregor long before Obi-Wan Kenobi or “Men Who Stare At Goats” as a recovering heroin addict, is probably the most graphic.   

Opium Wars.  In the 1840s, England traded with China.  They paid in silver, a valuable commodity, but had a surplus of opium grown in Afghanistan and India, so they decided they'd rather pay the Chinese in opium than silver.  The Chinese weren't idiots, and refused.  Unfortunately for the Chinese, despite having invented gunpowder centuries before the British, they fell well behind in its practical - military - applications; as early as the twentienth century, entire units of the Imperial Chinese Army and various warlord armies were equipped with spears.   Of course the British were successful at coercing the Chinese into accepting opium as payment instead of silver.  As you might imagine, this caused many problems in China and considerable anger and resentment.  See my blog on the Boxer Rebellion (1900).

Years ago our law office represented a heroin addict.  We negotiated a deal with his creditors to surrender his houseboat in a marina in southwest DC in exchange for writing off his debts.  He asked us to get a few personal belongings off the boat before surrendering it.  This boat essentially was a garbage scow, but he had been living on it.  Talk about a real life horror story.  Heroin? No thanks.