For the first year, five grains, or even two and a half, would suffice for a couple of days; that is to say, there was no craving of the system for it during its deprivation for this space. At the end of this period there would be a sense of depression amounting to little beyond uneasiness. But soon four hours' deprivation of the drug gave rise to a physical and mental prostration that no pen can adequately depict, no language convey: a horror unspeakable, a woe unutterable takes possession of the entire being; a clammy perspiration bedews the surface, the eye is stony and hard, the noise pointed, as in the hippocratic face preceding dissolution, the hands uncertain, the mind restless, the heart as ashes, the "bones marrowless."
To the opium-consumer, when deprived of this stimulant, there is nothing that life can bestow, not a blessing that man can receive, which would not come to him unheeded, undesired, and be a curse to him. There is but one all-absorbing want, one engrossing desire--his whole being has but one tongue--that tongue syllables but one word--_morphia_. And oh! the vain, vain attempt to break this bondage, the labor worse than useless--a minnow struggling to break the toils that bind a Triton!
I pass over all the horrible physical accompaniments that accumulate after some hours' deprivation of the drug when it has long been indulged in, it being borne in mind that it occurs sooner or later according to the constitution it contends against. Suffice it to say that the tongue feels like a copper bolt, and one seems to carry one's alimentary canal in the brain; that is to say, one is perpetually reminded that there is such a canal from the constant sense of pain and uneasiness, whereas the perfection of functional performance is obtained when the mind is unconscious of its operation.
The slightest mental or physical exertion is a matter of absolute impossibility. The winding of a watch I have regarded as a task of magnitude when not under the opium influence, and I was no more capable of controlling, under this condition, the cravings of the system for its pabulum, by any exertion of the will, than I, or any one else, could control the dilatation and contraction of the pupils of the eye under the varying conditions of light and darkness. A time arrives when the will is killed absolutely and literally, and at this period you might, with as much reason, tell a man to will not to die under a mortal disease as to resist the call that his whole being makes, in spite of him, for the pabulum on which it has so long been depending for carrying on its work.