Confessions of an English Opium-Eater · Chapter
Endnotes explained
The endnotes provide additional commentary, corrections, and anecdotes related to the main text, including discussions on opium dosage, effects, and personal experiences, as well as references to other works and historical figures.
What happens
The endnotes provide additional commentary, corrections, and anecdotes related to the main text, including discussions on opium dosage, effects, and personal experiences, as well as references to other works and historical figures.
Themes in this chapter
Addiction and Dependency
The narrator details his opium dosage reduction diary and the struggle with relapse, highlighting the grip of addiction.
Suffering and Trauma
References to Lithgow's rack torture and the narrator's own aggravated suffering during withdrawal.
Pleasure versus Pain
Discussion of the principle 'reculer pour mieux sauter' and how anger helps bear sufferings, illustrating the trade-off between pleasure and pain.
Characters to notice
- Thomas De Quincey
Provides extensive footnotes on opium use, including a diary of his dosage reduction and commentary on his own experiences.
- Mr. Harriott
Mentioned as a London magistrate who took large doses of laudanum without effect.
- William Lithgow
Referenced for his account of suffering on the rack at Malaga.
- Anastasius
Criticized for misrepresenting the effects of opium in his book.
Key passages
“and on the fifth night eighty , without any effect whatever; and this at an advanced age.”
Even at an advanced age, taking eighty drops on the fifth night had no effect.
Describes Mr. Harriott's tolerance to laudanum.
“William Lithgow. His book ( Travels , etc. ) is ill and pedantically written; but the account of his own sufferings on the rack at Malaga is overpoweringly affecting.”
William Lithgow's travel book is poorly written, but his description of being tortured on the rack in Malaga is deeply moving.
Commentary on Lithgow's work.
“What mean these abrupt relapses, the reader will ask perhaps, to such numbers as 300, 350, etc. ? The impulse to these relapses was mere infirmity of purpose; the motive , where any motive blended with this impulse, was either the principle, of ' reculer pour mieux sauter ;' (for under the torpor of a large dose, which lasted for a day or two, a less quantity satisfied the stomach, which on awakening found itself partly accustomed to this new ration); or else it was this principle—that of sufferings otherwise equal, those will be borne best which meet with a mood of anger.”
The sudden increases to 300 or 350 drops were due to weak will, sometimes with the rationale of 'stepping back to leap better' or because anger made the suffering more bearable.
Explains the narrator's relapse pattern during withdrawal.