Courteous reader, let me request you to move onwards for about eight years, to 1812. The years of academic life are now over and gone--almost forgotten. Am I married? Not yet. And I still take opium? On Saturday nights. And how do I find my health after all this opium-eating? In short, how do I do? Why, pretty well, I thank you, reader. In fact, though, to satisfy the theories of medical men, I _ought_ to be ill, I never was better in my life than in the spring of 1812. To moderation, and temperate use of the article I may ascribe it, I suppose, that as yet, at least, I am unsuspicious of the avenging terrors which opium has in store for those who abuse its lenity.
But now comes a different era. In 1813 I was attacked by a most appalling irritation of the stomach, and I could resist no longer. Let me repeat, that at the time I began to take opium daily, I could not have done otherwise. Still, I confess it as a besetting infirmity of mine that I hanker too much after a state of happiness, both for myself and others. From 1813, the reader is to consider me as a regular and confirmed opium-eater. Now, reader, from 1813 please walk forward about three years more, and you shall see me in a new character.
Now, farewell--a long farewell--to happiness, winter or summer! Farewell to smiles and laughter! Farewell to peace of mind! Farewell to hope and to tranquil dreams, and to the blessed consolations of sleep. For more than three years and a half I am summoned away from these. I am now arrived at an Iliad of woes.
It will occur to you to ask, why did I not release myself from the horrors of opium by leaving it off or diminishing it? The reader may be sure that I made attempts innumerable to reduce the quantity. It might be supposed that I yielded to the fascinations of opium too easily; it cannot be supposed that any man can be charmed by its terrors.
My studies have now been long interrupted. I cannot read to myself with any pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance. This intellectual torpor applies more or less to every part of the four years during which I was under the Circean spells of opium. But for misery and suffering, I might, indeed, be said to have existed in a dormant state. I seldom could prevail on myself even to write a letter. The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspirations. He wishes and longs as earnestly as ever to realise what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt.