The effect of opium, the reader must bear in mind, always lasts twenty-four hours; but its higher, more refined and stimulating influence exists but a few hours, when it sinks into the soporific effect, which extends over the remainder of the time. In the advanced stages of the opium habit, the stimulating influence, if there be any at all, lasts but a few minutes. I mean, that is, the pleasurable sensation and revival of the spirits; there may be at times or always an almost imperceptible stimulation which obtains a short time after taking a dose of opium, but this is an effect entirely different from the pleasurable sensation, though it may exist with or follow it for a short time. This I may term stimulation without sensation. A person's body may be so deadened by opium that it can no longer produce sensation, but may produce slight stimulation for a short time. One may become conscious of this by an increase of power in the faculties of the brain, and in the temporary removal of the obstructions that weigh upon the brain, and which the poor opium eater so often suffers from. "Suffers from?" Days upon days my head has felt as though it were encircled by an iron helmet, which was gradually becoming more and more contracted, until it would literally crush my skull. Add to this the distress so often experienced in the region of the epigastrium (pit of the stomach), which, perhaps, more at one time than another, but which does always, impair the working of the brain for the time being, and often cuts off almost totally the use of the mind, and what is left of a man mentally is very little indeed. Yet all these miseries he must endure, and more; but of these in the proper place, for we must now return to the subject properly in hand,--the first stages of opium eating,--from which I beg the reader's pardon for having digressed too far.
DE QUINCEY VERSUS COLERIDGE.--STIMULATION AND COLLAPSE CONSIDERED.--THE USE OF OPIUM ALWAYS TO BE CONDEMNED.--COLERIDGE DEFENDED.--WRETCHED STATE OF THE OPIUM EATER.--AN EXPLANATORY REMARK.
De Quincey charges Coleridge with having written many of his best things under the stimulus of opium. This may be so; he could not well write at all without being in some way affected by opium, seeing that he took it every day; but if this applied to the latter stage of opium eating (and I have reason to think it did), the little pleasurable sensation and stimulation he might well take advantage of, as at other times his condition must have been such as to interfere greatly with his writing at all to any purpose. But if this applied to the first stages, and he continued on writing after the stimulation and pleasurable sensation had subsided, his writings must have presented a very zigzag appearance; passing suddenly from the height of pleasure to the depth of misery--falling from the top round of stimulation and enjoyment to the lowest depth of dejection and debility. For it was my invariable experience during the first stages, that for every benefit received in intellectual force from stimulation, I suffered a corresponding injury or offset in the mental debility and prostration which ensued. The reaction that always followed the long strain of stimulation upon the brain, found me completely wilted and mentally exhausted. Up to the heights and down into the depths was the routine. Glorying in the skies or sweltering in the Styx. Like Sisyphus rolling his stone of punishment up the steep mountain, with which he no sooner reaches the top than away it rebounds to the bottom again, and so on eternally.