4. Acute shooting pains, confined to no one part of the body.
6. Frequent cold perspiration in parts of the body.
7. A tendency to impatience and irritability of temper, with paroxysms of excitement wholly foreign to the natural disposition.
I mention without hesitancy these consequences of the abandonment of opium, from the belief that any person really in earnest in his desire to relinquish the habit will be more likely to persevere by knowing at the start exactly what obstacles he may meet in his progress toward perfect recovery, than by having it gradually revealed to him, and that at times when his body and mind are both enfeebled by what he has passed through. With a single exception, the dismost serious one I have been obliged to encounter. Whether it is one of the specific effects of the disuse of opium, or only one of the many general results of a disordered constitution, I do not know.
I can only say in my own case, that after the lapse of years, this particular difficulty is not wholly overcome. This electric condition, so to call it, still continues a serious annoyance. But when it occurs, the pain is of less duration, and gradually, but very slowly, is of diminished frequency. Violent exercise will sometimes relieve it; a long walk has often the same effect. The use of stimulants brings alleviation for a time, but there seems to be no permanent remedy except in the perfect restoration of the system by time from this effect of the wear and tear of opium upon the nerves. Irregularity in the action of the liver, while singularly marked in the earlier stages of the experiment, and continuing for years to make its agency manifestly felt, is in a considerable degree checked and controlled by a judicious use of calomel.
The condition of the digestive organs is less impaired than I should have supposed possible, judging from the experience of others. A moderate degree of attention to the quality of what is eaten, with proper care to avoid what is not easily digested, with the exercise of habitual self-control in respect to quantity, suffices to prevent, for the most part, all unendurable feelings of discomfort in this part of the system. Whether the habitually febrile condition of the mouth, and the swollen state of the tongue, is referable to a disturbed action of the stomach or of the liver I can not say. It is certain that none of the effects of opium-eating are more marked or more obstinately tenacious in their hold upon the system than these. I barely advert to the frequent impossibility of retaining some kinds of food upon the stomach, which has been one unpleasant part of my experience, because I doubt whether this return of a difficulty which began in childhood has any necessary connection with the use of opium. For many years before I knew any thing of the drug I had been a daily sufferer from this cause. Indeed the use of opium seemed to control this tendency, and it was only when the remedy was abandoned that the old annoyance returned. For a few months the stomach rejected every kind of food; but in less than a year, and subsequently to the present time, this has been of only occasional ocurrence.