These are substantially all the physical peculiarities I experienced during my opium-using years. It is still true, however, that the years of my using opium (or, in perfect strictness, morphine) were as healthy as any, if not the very healthiest, of the years of my life.
But what of the effects of opium-eating on the mind? The one great injury it works, is (I think) to the will, that force whereby a man executes the work he was sent here to do, and breasts and overcomes the obstacles and difficulties he is appointed to encounter, and bears himself unflinchingly amid the tempests of calamity and sorrow which pertain to the mortal lot. Hardihood, manliness, resolution, enterprise, ambition, whatever the original degree of these qualities, become grievously debilitated if not wholly extinct. Reverie, the perusal of poetry and fiction, becomes the darling occupation, of the opium-user, and he hates every call that summons him from it. Give him an intellectual task to accomplish; place him in a position where a mental, effort is to be made; and, most probably, he will acquit him with unusual brilliancy and power, supposing his native ability to be good. But he can not or will not seek and find for himself such work and such position. He feels helpless, and incompetent to stir about and hold himself upright amid the jostling, competitive throngs that crowd the world's paths, and there seek life's prizes by performing life's duties and executing its requisitions. Solitude, with his books, his dreams and imaginings, and the excited sensibilities that lead to no external action, constitute his chosen world and favorite life. In one word, he is a species of maniac; since, I believe, his views, his feelings, and his desires in relation to most things are peculiar, eccentric, and unlike those of other men, or of himself in a state of soundness. There is, however, as complete a "method in his madness" as in the sanity of other men. He is in a different sphere from other men, and in that sphere he is sane.