Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

by Thomas DeQuincey

Overview

"I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life: according to my application of it, I trust that it will prove not merely an interesting record, but in a considerable degree useful and instructive." So begins "The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater." Originally published in two parts in the "London Magazine" in 1821, it is a gripping account of one Englishman's addiction to opium. Thomas De Quincey details the effects of his opium use and in so doing warns the reader of the dangers and terrors of serious drug addiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781625580061
Publisher:	Start Publishing LLC
Publication date:	11/01/2012
Series:	Van A tot ggZ
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	357 KB

About the Author

Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859) was an English author and intellectual, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. A number of medical practitioners have speculated on the physical ailments that inspired and underlay De Quincey's resort to opium, and searched the corpus of his autobiographical works for evidence. One possibility is "a mild ... case of infantile paralysis" that he may have contracted from Wordsworth's children. De Quincey certainly had intestinal problems, and problems with his vision - which could have been related: "uncorrected myopic astigmatism ... manifests itself as digestive problems in men." De Quincey also suffered neuralgic facial pain, "trigeminal neuralgia" - "attacks of piercing pain in the face, of such severity that they sometimes drive the victim to suicide." As with many addicts, De Quincey's opium addiction may have had a "self-medication" aspect for real physical illnesses, as well as a psychological aspect. Psychologically, he had what Alethea Hayter has called the "pariah temperament" typical of drug addicts. By his own testimony, De Quincey first used opium in 1804 to relieve his neuralgia; he used it for pleasure, but no more than weekly, through 1812. It was in 1813 that he first commenced daily usage, in response to illness and his grief over the death of Wordsworth's young daughter Catherine. In the periods of 1813-16 and 1817-19 his daily dose was very high, and resulted in the sufferings recounted in the final sections of his Confessions. For the rest of his life his opium use fluctuated between extremes; he took "enormous doses" in 1843, but late in 1848 he went for 61 days with none at all. There are many theories surrounding the effects of opium on literary creation, and notably, his periods of low usage were literarily unproductive.