Opium (14 page)

The problem with opiates in general is that they are addictive and although the risk of dependence varies greatly from one to another, a frequent user will become habituated.

Addiction is the compulsive taking of drugs which have such a hold over the addict he or she cannot stop using them without suffering severe symptoms and even death. Opiates are not unique. Cocaine, alcohol, caffeine and nicotine are also addictive, but they are nothing like as powerful as opiates in their hold over their victims. Nowadays, the term addiction is replaced by that of physical dependence, which is a more accurate definition, for addicts are frequently physically dependent upon their drug: this is certainly the case with opiates.

The idea of dependence was defined in 1964 by the World Health Organisation as ‘a state, psychic and sometimes also physical, resulting from the interaction between a living organism and a drug, characterised by behavioural and other responses that always include a compulsion to take the drug on a continuous or periodic basis in order to experience its psychic effects and sometimes to avoid the discomfort of its absence.' It is today considered an illness.

Opiate dependence is not a habit, nor is it a simple drive for some emotional craving. It is as fundamental to an addict's existence as food and water, a physio-chemical fact: an addict's body is chemically reliant upon its drug for opiates actually alter the body's chemistry so it cannot function properly without being periodically primed. A hunger for the drug forms when the quantity in the bloodstream falls below a certain level, the addict becoming anxious and irritable. Fail to feed the body and it deteriorates and may die from drug starvation.

This chemical relationship is easily proven. Not only humans can be addicted: so can other mammals. In Laos, where opium is commonly smoked, domestic pets such as cats and dogs become addicts by passively smoking their master's pipes. Tame macaques in India may also become passive addicts and, in the past, became addicted by licking out cold opium pipes. Today, drug-sniffing dogs employed by customs authorities are sometimes trained on synthetic opium-smelling substances because they are liable to addiction. Addicts give birth to on average smaller babies which, after the umbilical cord is severed, may exhibit symptoms of opium withdrawal having been literally cut off from a supply they have known since conception.

For the non-addict, one of the greatest mysteries is why someone takes to drug use knowing the terrible dangers. Philip K. Dick, the American science-fiction author, spoke for many people when he wrote in 1977: ‘Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error of judgement.' Clearly peer pressure, poverty and other social factors are likely to play their part in this decision-making process but the fact remains – why ‘hard', very addictive drugs, such as opiates, instead of alcohol or ‘soft' drugs such as marijuana? It may be that some, especially the very young, are unaware of what they are taking: this might account for the present-day world-wide trend towards younger and younger addicts. A young British addict who first took heroin at thirteen, not realising it was addictive, recently stated, ‘I was feeling left out. My mates were having a better laugh, so I tried it.' A recent British survey has found Ecstasy users smoking ‘skag' to ease the fading effects of an Ecstasy dose, in ignorance of what it is: skag is a street name for heroin.

Perhaps some users are hoping to find an alternative existence as summed up by Aldous Huxley in 1949:

If we could sniff or swallow something that would, for five or six hours each day, abolish our solitude as individuals, atone us with our fellows in a glowing exaltation of affection and make life in all its aspects seem not only worth living, but divinely beautiful and significant, and if this heavenly, world-transfiguring drug were of such a kind that we could wake up next morning with a clear head and an undamaged constitution – then, it seems to me, all our problems (and not merely the one small problem of discovering a novel pleasure) would be wholly solved and earth would become paradise.

One assumption, which holds good for heroin and morphine, is the ‘kick' or ‘rush', the orgasmic sensuality of an injection which is particularly prevalent with heroin. For some heroin addicts, the effect is a warming of the stomach and an erotic tingling in the crotch: for others, this is heightened to a considerable erotic thrill. Perhaps the reason is summed up best by the comedian Lenny Bruce, who stated of his fatal addiction, ‘I'll die young, but it's like kissing God.' The erotic pleasure can, however, be offset by a characteristic vomiting which the first shots of heroin or morphine produce.

For many addicts, heroin is favoured because, whilst allowing them to maintain full consciousness, they can withdraw into a secure, cocoon-like state of physical and emotional painlessness. Heroin is seen as an escape to tranquillity, a liberation from anxiety and stress: for the poor, it is a way out of the drudgery of life, just as laudanum was for their forebears two centuries ago.

For a long while it was believed – as an offshoot from the eugenics debate – that only certain types of people might turn to drugs and become addicted. Orientals, it was suggested, were more resistant to opium than Occidentals, the assumption based on the supposition poisons were less dangerous to an indigenous population living where the substances were naturally occurring. This, of course, was bunkum for the poppy is not native to Asia. Victorian moralists and social observers claimed the lower classes showed a greater predilection for, and were worse affected by, opium than the middle and upper classes. This too was claptrap.

Everyone, regardless of social, economic or racial background or type of physique, is a potential addict although today some doctors opine that certain people are genetically predisposed towards addiction. Opinions, such as those of the nineteenth-century American doctor, R. Batholow, are discounted: his ideal candidate for addiction was ‘a delicate female, having light blue eyes and flaxen hair, [who] possesses, according to my observations the maximum susceptibility.' His opinion was not unique. Many of his contemporaries thought women particularly at risk: with hindsight, this conclusion may have been caused by the fact that morphine was so widely used to treat menstrual problems, diseases of a ‘nervous character' from which women were believed to suffer and was also administered as an analgesic in pregnancy and labour. Furthermore, prostitutes used opiates not only to sustain them in their long and arduous work but also as a crude form of contraception because continued dosage disrupted ovulation.

It was also suggested that addiction was related to psychological disorders or types. As recently as the 1920s, Dr Lawrence Kolb of the United States Public Health Service expressed the belief that ‘normal' people gained no pleasure from morphine except the release of pain and that pleasure was only felt by mentally unstable people. The addict, he claimed, was of psychopathic tendency. His theory is dismissed now but it is accepted that specific mental attributes may lead to drug use: these include a restless curiosity about unknown experiences and a desire to share visions with others. This may account for the quasi-religious attitudes of some addicts who see themselves in the initial phases of addiction as joining with others in a cosmic experience. For many, addiction is an entry to a special fellowship with its own mores, rules and even language. Morphine addicts in the USA spoke in an esoteric jargon – the act of injection was erroneously known as ‘Chinese needlework' whilst to smoke heroin or opium was to have the ‘lamp habit'.

Addicts today have their own argot – to ‘shoot up' is to inject intravenously, to ‘chase the dragon' is to smoke opium or heroin whilst heroin itself has a wide variety of slang names such as ‘horse', ‘H', ‘Big Harry', ‘elephant', ‘stuff', ‘candy', ‘smack' and (ironically) ‘shit'. To be addicted is to have ‘a monkey on your back' or to be ‘strung out' whilst a dealer is a ‘pusher', ‘candyman' or ‘connection'. Heroin is sold by the ‘deal' (a single dose in a tiny paper packet), the ‘deck' (a small bagful), the ‘piece' (approximately 1 ounce), the ‘half-lo' (15 bags'-worth) and the ‘key' (short for kilogram). The act of adulteration or diluting is known as ‘cutting' because the measures of powder are traditionally mixed and separated with a sharp edge like a razor blade. Heavily cut heroin is known as ‘six and four'. To be asked if one ‘wants a boy' does not imply a homosexual relationship: ‘boy' is a metaphor for heroin and the reply is ‘no way' if one is ‘anywhere' – that is, in possession. One expression, seldom associated with opium today but derived from drug-taking, is ‘hip'. Meaning to be one of the in-crowd, it comes from nineteenth-century American addict slang when a ‘hip' was an experienced drug taker: its root lay in the fact addicts gained sore hips from reclining on their sides on hard, opium den bed-boards. Despite such an extensive vocabulary of opiate slang, heroin users do not today have their own specific culture, as is sometimes implied by the media, unlike, for example, Ecstasy which has an accompanying culture of rave parties and its own style of neo-pop music.

So what is taking opium like? The first effect is relaxation although a few may experience a transitory, sudden rush of excitement like the erotic heroin kick. Cares, concerns and inhibitions are dispelled, to be followed by a calmness, although there may be some nausea in the early stages. The calmness grows to a serene self-assurance then a listless complacency. Nothing worries nor concerns opium takers: they often feel light, as if floating, and many describe themselves as levitating whilst under the influence. Early in addiction, mental power may be enhanced or increased and addicts believe they are having radical and unique ideas and thoughts.

As many addicted writers and artists vouchsafe, opium may stimulate visions in those with considerable imagination but, of itself, opium is not a fantasy-promoting substance. In latter stages of addiction, all opiates actually suppress imaginative creation, just as they can suppress the ability to be creative in other art forms. As Billie Holliday, the famous blues singer, said in 1956: ‘If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you're out of your mind … If you think you need stuff to play music or sing, you're crazy. It can fix you so you can't play nothing or sing nothing.'

The exciting stage of drug experience does not last long: it may be sustained for a matter of months but it is more likely to begin to disappear after a few weeks, depending upon the addict's metabolism. With raw opium it may survive for quite a while although Eric Detzer, in his autobiography
Monkey on my Back,
put modern opium-eating into context:

There's nothing classy or poetic about opium. It has the same effect as morphine or heroin. You get relaxed and energetic at the same time. Problems become unimportant. You feel sleepy, but if you go to bed you lie awake. You itch all over. You get constipated. You get hungry, particularly for sweets. You get patient and understanding. You get nice … An opium high can be described in one word: comfortable. It's weird that people get to where they'll give up their souls for stuff that just makes them comfortable.

With heroin, the kick reduces as tolerance rises, addicts taking larger and larger amounts, which would be fatally poisonous to unaccustomed individuals, just to feel normal. The ‘high' – the plateau of experience to which all heroin addicts aspire, where reality is suborned – disappears and excitement rapidly deteriorates as dependency increases. The sought-after euphoria becomes more difficult to achieve and is then lost: by this stage dependency is firmly established and if it is not sustained, the addict slips into a state of first restless distress then excruciating physical pain. This is known as withdrawal sickness or abstinence syndrome – or, in the slang of the modern addict, ‘cold turkey' or ‘bogue'.

While most addicts, having lost the euphoria, build up their doses in order to try to regain it, others, desperate to feel the rush or peace again, start taking drug cocktails, such as ‘speedballs' (heroin and cocaine) or “Frisco speedballs' (heroin, cocaine and the hallucinogen, LSD) or other similarly dangerous concoctions of heroin with ‘uppers' (amphetamines), ‘downers' (barbiturates), ‘jacket' (Nembutal) or ‘crystal' (Methedrine). Inevitably, many die from an ‘OD' – an overdose.

Popular belief labels all addicts as desperate characters but they are not. A minority maintain their habit at a steady dose rate, just keeping themselves above the threshold of withdrawal. They may live conventional lives, even hold down responsible jobs without detection by even close friends and family. George Crabbe was an example of such a ‘secret' addict. Another was William Wilberforce: a noted evangelist, statesman, philanthropist and reformer, he succeeded against considerable vested interests in abolishing the slave trade and yet he was himself in thrall to opium, the one slavery he could do nothing to end.

Opiates in themselves are relatively safe drugs and even today addicts in receipt of opiates on prescription, and who maintain a stable, hygienic life-style, can be virtually indistinguishable from non-drug users and suffer no serious damage. A present-day consultant psychiatrist running a British drug-dependency unit has stated he knows of an 85-year-old woman from the Scottish Hebrides who has been injecting heroin for sixty years.

For those who do not control their addiction, physical deterioration is inevitable. The first symptoms of physical decline are inflammation of the mouth and throat, gastric illnesses and circulatory disorders which can weaken limbs so far as to paralyse them. At the same time, addicts become demoralised, insensitive to their surroundings and self-centred. They feel, often with justification, outcast and yet value their drug-imposed insularity. Quite often, because of their constant physical lassitude and moral turpitude, they do not bother to take any interest in personal hygiene: against such a condition, it is no wonder it is so difficult to press home the need not to share needles which leads to the transmission of the AIDS virus.