Opium

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OP IUM
In the history of mankind,
there have only been a few
commodities with the power
to single-handedly change the
course of nations. Among
those few, three stand head
and shoulders above the rest:
sugar, oil and opium.
Whether legal or illegal, opium
is by far the most successful
drug in human history. Over
the course of centuries, opium
has touched more people than
aspirin.
Opium has inspired great art
and literature, provoked wars
and funded terrorists. Opium
has been cultivated for its
narcotic effects since the earliest days of recorded history, and even today, it's a huge component of mainstream
medicine and the recreational mind-fuck market.
Derived from the poppy flower, opium is usually harvested as a resin extracted from the plant's seed pods. The
resin can then be smoked or consumed in its raw form, or processed for intravenous application.
Opium was cultivated for its narcotic effects at least as far back as 4,000 B.C., and
possibly a lot further. In its least processed form, the drug conveys a sense of peace
and contentment, in addition to alleviating pain.
The poppy was first grown in Sumeria, the M editerranean, Europe and the Near East.
The Ancient Greeks were big fans of the drug. In the Odyssey, Homer describes a
drink commonly believed to be an opium-based concoction:
Then Helen, daughter of Zeus, turned to new thoughts. Presently she cast a drug
into the wine whereof they drank, a drug to lull all pain and anger, and bring
forgetfullness of every sorrow. Whoso should drink a draught thereof, when it is mingled in the bowl, on
that day he would let no tear fall down his cheeks, not though his mother and his father died, not though
men slew his brother or dear son with the sword before his face, and his own eyes beheld it.
Now that's good stuff. Homer was one of the earliest literary advocates of opium, but he was hardly the only one.
Over the course of centuries, some of the greatest names in literature would sing the praises of opium, and many
credited their work to the drug.
The roster of creative luminaries who used straight-up opium, to greater or lesser degrees, included Charles
Baudelaire, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Keats, Bela
Lugosi, William Burroughs, Jean Cocteau, Arthur Conan Doyle, Billie Holliday, Pablo Picasso and Percy Shelley.
And that's just opium. We haven't even begun to talk about the poppy's refined derivatives yet, including heroin,
morphine, and laudanum.
"Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an
express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to
get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern
oneself with something other than life or death," wrote
Jean Cocteau, the French writer and filmmaker.
Another Frenchman, actor Antonin Artaud, credited his
creativity rather creatively to the absence of opium. "It is
not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in
order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time
be present."
British author Thomas De Quincey wrote one of the most
famous tracts about the glories of opium, Confessions of
an English Opium-Eater, published in 1822. The book is a
length poem to opium's splendors, full of rapturous
passages describing his experiences with the drug, such as
the first time he took it (to treat a toothache):
oh! Heavens! what a revulsion! what an
upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the
inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the
world within me! That my pains had
vanished, was now a trifle in my eyes: this negative effect was swallowed up in
the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me - in the abyss
of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea - a (pharmakon
nepenthez) for all human woes: here was the secret of happiness, about which

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philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered: happiness might now
be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket: portable ecstasies
might be had corked up in a pint bottle: and peace of mind could be sent down in
gallons by the mail coach.

As you can see, he kinda liked it.

Oh! just, subtle, and mighty opium! that to the hearts of poor and rich alike, for
the wounds that will never heal, and for "the pangs that tempt the spirit to
rebel," bringest and assuaging balm; eloquent opium! that with thy potent rhetoric
stealest away the purposes of wrath; and to the guilty man, for one night givest
back the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure from blood; and to the proud
man, a brief oblivion for Wrongs unredress'd, and insults unavenged; that summonest
to the chancery of dreams, for the triumphs of suffering innocence, false
witnesses; and confoundest perjury; and dost reverse the sentences of unrighteous
judges...

Well, let's just note that it goes on. And on and on. Aside from promoting excessive verbiage, opium in its most
basic form was relatively inoffensive at the physical level. M ost of the negative health effects associated with
opium use had to do with the fact that the habitual user eventually became obsessed with the drug, much like
DeQuincey.
A true addict, DeQuincey tried to reduce his opium intake at various points during his life, and he even tried to quit
once, for the sake of science and the completeness of his Confessions. He managed to go 90 hours before relapsing.
DeQuincey resumed his opium use at a much lower level for a few weeks, but he was obliged to start using it
heavily again when he found himself unable to review the final proofs of Confessions. As he explained at the end of
the text, DeQuincey had to start using opium again so he could tell people what it was like to stop using opium.
(No sacrifice is too great for the furtherance of science.)
Opium users like DeQuincey consumed the drug in a variety of forms. The earliest opium users simply ate the
seeds and resin of the poppy plant, either by itself or baked into a cake or loaf. The flowers and other parts of the
plant could be used for a more subdued rush. Later, users discovered that opium mixed well with other drugs, such
as alcohol or nicotine.
One of the most popular preparations was laudanum, developed in the
16th century, in which opium was dissolved into alcohol as a beverage or
tincture. Another hybrid, paregoric, was a combination of alcohol, camphor
and opium used to treat diahrrea and persistent coughs. Both these
products were given to children and even babies, either to treat illnesses or
simply to quiet them down.
In recreational use, the combination of opium and tobacco created a
booming industry of opium dens, strange surreal places where smokers of
opium congregated to sit steeped in their euphoria. Arthur Conan Doyle
wrote one of the most memorable descriptions of an opium den in his
Sherlock Holmes adventure, The Man With The Twisted Lip, in which Dr.
Watson sets off to rescue a family friend from iniquity:
Ordering my cab to wait, I passed down the steps, worn
hollow in the centre by the ceaseless tread of drunken
feet; and by the light of a flickering oil-lamp above
the door I found the latch and made my way into a long,
low room, thick and heavy with the brown opium smoke,
and terraced with wooden berths, like the forecastle of
an emigrant ship.
Through the gloom one could dimly catch a glimpse of
bodies lying in strange fantastic poses, bowed
shoulders, bent knees, heads thrown back, and chins
pointing upward, with here and there a dark,
lack-lustre eye turned upon the newcomer. Out of the
black shadows there glimmered little red circles of
light, now bright, now faint, as the burning poison
waxed or waned in the bowls of the metal pipes. The
most lay silent, but some muttered to themselves, and
others talked together in a strange, low, monotonous voice, their conversation
coming in gushes, and then suddenly tailing off into silence, each mumbling out his
own thoughts and paying little heed to the words of his neighbour. At the farther
end was a small brazier of burning charcoal, beside which on a three-legged wooden
stool there sat a tall, thin old man, with his jaw resting upon his two fists, and
his elbows upon his knees, staring into the fire. (...)

"Opium fiends" were often profiled as lean, haggard-looking individuals, mainly because pursuits like eating and
grooming seemed insignificant when compared to the pursuit of precious, precious opium.
Opium was so precious, in fact, that nations went to war over it.
The most notable of these incidents were the Opium Wars of the
19th Century. The initial war over opium broke out between
Britain and China. China had instituted a restrictive policy on
foreign trade, which the British violated by smuggling opium into
the country.
China banned imported opium, and destroyed a major British
shipment, and the Brits responded by invading. China lost.
Several years later, more or less the same dynamic broke out
between China and the British, who were allied with the French
the second time around. China lost again.
Around the same time, several significant developments were taking place in the world of opium. In 1803, a German

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pharmacist invented a method for distilling opium into an immensely more powerful form - morphine. The good
news was that morphine was exponentially more effective than raw opium in treating pain and other illnesses. The
bad news was that morphine was exponentially more addictive than raw opium, which was (as we have seen) pretty
damn addictive in the first place.
Things took a turn for the worse (or the better, depending on
your perspective) with the introduction of heroin in 1874.
The medical community and pharmaceutical companies like
Bayer rushed to embrace both heroin and morphine, making
them widely available over the counter in pharmacies by the
beginning of the 20th century, when the tide of public
opinion began to shift.
Although the new breeds of opium derivatives were insanely
more addictive than their predecessor, the entire category of
opiates was lumped together, and the public campaign
against drugs of all kinds treated them as a single scourge in
many cases.
In 1914, the U.S. passed the Harrison Narcotics Act, which
restricted the possession and use of opium and its
derivatives (as well as other drugs) to doctor-prescribed
medications only.
It was, of course, ridiculous to suggest that drug use was
somehow un-American. Benjamin Franklin used opium late
in his life, albeit to treat severe pain. George Washington is
also said to have believed in flower power, although he may
have used it as laudanum, a derivative form.
Nevertheless, the 20th century saw a sharp increase in America's drug hysteria, fueled by racism directed against
Chinese laborers who had come to the U.S. to help build the railroads and brought their cultural tradition of opium
use with them. M any propaganda screeds invoked images of innocent white women lured into depravity in the
opium dens of San Francisco and elsewhere.
M assive crops of opium poppies are still harvested every year in Southern Asia and South America, for both
"legitimate" and "criminal" purposes. One of the most important opium economies in recent decades has been
Afghanistan, where even in the middle of the U.S. invasion, farmers produced 3,400 tons of opium for shipment
around the world.
Under the Taliban, opium exports were even higher. A 2003 study estimated that 75% of the heroin consumed in
Europe is extracted from Afghan stocks. Opium and heroin trafficking out of Afghanistan totaled more than $1
billion in 2002. Both before and after the U.S. invasion, opium trafficking is believed to have helped fund al Qaeda
and other terrorist groups from around Southern Asia.
While the consumption of raw opium is on the decline, demand for the poppy is still incredibly strong, since
morphine has become a staple of medical anesthesia. Heroin and its derivatives are still extremely popular among
recreational users. Opium may no longer be the "just, subtle, and mighty" drug of popular choice, but it will still be
a cash crop for years to come, a fact that is no doubt a source of great comfort to Osama bin Laden, wherever he
might be.

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