If to these discomforts be added a prevailing tendency to a febrile condition of body, together with permanent disorder in portions of the secretory system, the catalogue of annoyances with which the long-reformed opium-eater may have to contend is completed. This statement is not made to exaggerate the suffering consequent upon the disuse of opium, but is made on the ground that a full apprehension of what the patient may be called upon to go through will best enable him to make up his mind to one resolute, unflinching effort for the redemption of himself from his bad habits.
So far as the body is concerned, there is much in my experience which induces me to give a general assent to the opinion expressed by a medical man of great reputation whom I repeatedly consulted in reference to the discouraging slowness of my own restoration to perfect health. "I can not see," he said, "that your constitution has been permanently injured; but you were a great many years getting into this state, and I think it will take nearly as many to get you out of it."
It may not be amiss to add that those opium-eaters whose circumstances exempt them from harassing cares, who meet only with kindness and sympathy from friends, and who have resources for enjoyment within themselves, have in respect to these subsequent inconveniences greatly the advantage of those whose position and circumstances are less fortunate.
These free and almost confidential personal statements have been made, not without doing some violence to that instinctive sense of propriety which prompts men to shrink from giving publicity to their weaknesses and from the vanity of seeming to imply that their individual experience of life is of special value to others. Leaving undecided the question whether under any circumstances a departure from the general rule of good sense and good taste in such matters is justifiable, I have, nevertheless, done what I could to give to opium-eaters a truthful statement of the consequences that may ensue from their abandonment of the habit. The path toward perfect recovery is certainly a weary one to travel; but in all these long years, with nervous sensibilities unnaturally active, in much pain of body, through innumerable sleepless nights, with hope deferred and the expectation of complete restoration indefinitely prolonged, I have never lost faith in the final triumph of a patient and persistent resolution. Many men seem to know little of the wonderful power which simple endurance has, in determining every conflict between good and evil. The triumph which is achieved in a single day is a triumph hardly worth the having; but when all impatience, unreasonableness, weaknesses and vanities have been burned out of our natures by the heat of suffering; when the resolution never falters to endure patiently whatever may come in the endeavor to measure one's own case justly, and exactly as it is; and when time has been allowed to exert its legitimate influence in calming whatever has been disturbed and correcting whatever has been prejudiced, a conscious strength is developed far beyond what is natural to men possessed only of ordinary powers of endurance. It is chiefly through patient waiting that the confirmed victim of opium can look for relief. All who have made heroic efforts to this end, and yet have failed in their attempt, have done so through the absence of adequate confidence in the efficacy of time to bring them relief. The _one_ lesson, however, which the reforming opium-eater must learn is, never to relinquish any gain, however slight, which he may make upon his bad habit. Patience will bring him relief at last, and though he may and will find his progress continually thwarted and himself often tempted to give over the contest in despair, he may be sure that year by year he is steadily advancing to the perfect recovery of all that he has lost.