Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Confessions of an English Opium Eater has ratings and reviews. Fionnuala said: The Opium Eaters, a comedy, based on the sleeping habits of Thom.
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When De Quincey was seven, his father died, living him in the care of four tutors. After changing several esteemed boarding schools, the protagonist came to Eton, where he discovered his passion for Old Greek and Ancient literature. However, he wanted to drop out of school when he was seventeen but his guardians didn't approve, therefore he ran away from Eton.

He traveled to Northern Wales where the villagers asked him to do small work as an exchange to food and a place to say. Unfortunately, he ran short of money and he was forced to move on, thus he found himself in London. There he almost starved to death, but a fifteen-years-old prostitute - Ann -saved him and thus the two became friends.

Her gesture and his sympathy for her followed him all his life, but he did not see her again because he had never asked for her last name. Being fed up with poverty, De Quincey asks an old school friend - Earl of D - to lend him some money to return home. He reconciles with his family and goes to Oxford University. From this point on, the narrator begins to tell his reader about his good and bad experiences with opium. As De Quincey confesses, the previous period of his life left deep marks on his health - severe stomachaches, intolerance to certain foods and psychic traumas.

The first time he used opium was after a friend suggested it as a pain-killer for toothache. Afterwards, he began consuming it regularly by counting the drops. Throughout the years he had to consume more because the doze didn't have the same pleasant effects. The obsessive counting of the drops may represent the fact that De Quincey wanted to keep his addiction under control, because he took it for medical reasons, not for pleasure.

My favorite part of the book is when De Quincey began to feel the bad effects of opium such as the hallucinations and nightmares, which usually took place in Orient and North Africa China, Turkey, and Egypt etc. The Malay, who has previously showed up at his door and to whom De Quincey offers a good amount of opium, he will also appear in the author's dreams.

The style of the Confessions is erudite, seasoned with Greek terms, references to Ancient literature and other domains. Even if the title suggests the idea of confessions regarding the author's life, here opium is the center piece of the book, with its positive and negative effects. There are also many digressions that might annoy the reader, but they have their purpose, such as the causes and the justification for De Quincey's use of opium. One person found this helpful. I loved the personal account of the main character - an observant and philosophical diarist - describing his life and descent into drug addiction during the age of reason.

There was an unexpected end as well. Not a long book, but one of unique insight and impact. First of all dont read the introduction as this will ruin your reading on the original, base work- "The Confessions.. Just when I would grow tired of the work and would set it down for a time I would come back to it to find some beautiful, finely crafted passage.

Danton Eeprom - Confessions of an English Opium Eater

If you are reading this as I was for knowledge about drug addiction I also recommend highly, Aleister Crowleyy's- "Diary of a Drug Fiend. I decided to read this classic description of the effects of consuming opium because it was mentioned in The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, a contemporary of Charles Dickens, and because opium use is such an important element in Dickens' last, uncompleted novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. I am not fully sure how the use of opium in Dickens' time differs from the use of heroin today.

I know, of course, that opium was smoked and is probably still smoked in Chinese opium dens, but that it was usually dissolved in alcohol, as "laudanum", in Europe. Heroin, on the other hand, is usually melted and injected directly into the blood stream. If the author, Thomas de Quincey, suffered terrible hallucinations from heavy use of laudanum, I can only guess at the severity of the effects of heroin injection.

I found this book, published about , quite dated, telling me much more about its author than about the positive and negative effects of opium use. That the use was quite widespread surprised me, although I learned that opium was neither taxed nor banned in England in the author's time period. De Quincey's description of the effects of opium during the first eight or nine years of his use is really more interesting that his description of the horrors he experienced after that time, when he tried to decrease and stop his usage -- to save his life.

I will cite just a couple of quotations to illustrate the different stages of the story. The effect of opium use upon the author's mind and his appreciation of music: Now, for the most part analytic studies are continuous, and not to be pursued by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts. The focus is laser-like. Who the man himself might actually be, remains a mystery. View all 13 comments. Jul 07, Tyler rated it did not like it Recommends it for: How does this writer get away with it? The structure is a disaster. A footnote on one page tells about the family name Quincey ; that footnote refers readers to an appendix; that appendix has yet more footnotes, all devoted to the name.

Similar discontinuity sends readers down many blind alleys. The chapter titles have nothing to do with the content, and the text in places is indexed with numbers which even break down into Roman numerals — all to make inconsequential points. De Quincey mounts a defense in the first pages against the poet Coleridge.

After that, the opaque perspective yields no clue what the author was actually like. Thickly overwritten prose flummoxes readers.

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater - Wikipedia

The author brandishes verbose, circuitous sentences studded with Latin and Greek, the latter in its own alphabet. So esoteric is his writing that at times I simply had no idea what the author was getting at; at other times I had no idea what he just said. More grating still is the silly affectation. The author in places addresses people and things in the second person using thee and thou , as if his puerile personal cares call for poetic license. In other places, his prodigious recollections pass off ersatz sentiment as something authentic.

The tedious, self-absorbed content ultimately goes on to chronicle every aching hangnail this crazy fool ever had. I consider as a result that readers should treat this book with a similar indifference. View all 12 comments. Mar 06, Alex rated it it was amazing Shelves: While this is maybe not indispensable, it's also not more than pages, so it gets five stars based on its ratio of awesomeness vs. And it is pretty awesome.

De Quincey is funny and weird and literate, and the roots of all kinds of drug stories - from those quoted above to Trainspotting and, oh, A Million Little Pieces - are clearly visible. In one of tho "First published in , it paved the way for later generations of literary drug users, from Baudelaire to Burroughs.

In one of those proud yet crushing moments where you realize that thought you were so psyched about of has, as Public Enemy said, been thought before: I've always thought that people get more honest when they drink, so if that nice new friend of yours gets weirdly mean and creepy when he's drunk, you might want to think twice about inviting him to your wedding. And here's de Quincey: One of my favorite passages because, unlike opium, I'm quite familiar with the effects of wine.

If you're interested in drugs, or wine, or the idea of a counter culture, or pretty writing, or the history of opium and its significant effect on the world, this is worth an afternoon. View all 10 comments. Nov 20, Hadrian rated it really liked it Shelves: This is as much a treat for the prose style as it is for the hallucinatory detail. The edition I received from the library dating from the s! The first is the 'Confessions' as shown in the title, and is split into three further parts - a biographical sketch of the author's life, and The Pleasures and Pains of Opium, respectively.

His descriptions are long-winded and evocative. Time and space slow down, and he felt lifted up to a supreme pleasure, where all pain was gone. The This is as much a treat for the prose style as it is for the hallucinatory detail. Then once the drug wears off, you spend all night wishing you want to die and your body rebels against you. But I'll let de Quincey describe that better. The second part of the book is called Suspiria de Profundis, or 'Sighs from the Depths'. This is a fragmentary, yet brilliant series of descriptions on the hallucinations he saw and heard while under the influence.

Roman goddesses, sunken cities, German mountaintops, human memory, and so forth.

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey

A dark fragmented phantasm. Don't do drugs kids! Opium was perfectly legal when the author took it, and all of its cousins - like heroin - are still too dangerous. Unless you're Vollmann, who can shrug off cocaine like the rest of us drink coffee so I hear. Seriously, don't do it. It'll wreck us lesser mortals and shatter our minds and mortal bodies. Don't even do it for the chance that you'll produce some real neat art for it. It's not worth it. The good creativity and emotion will fade away into a broken memory soon enough and all that's left of you is dying.

View all 3 comments. Thomas de Quincey started taking opium in the form of laudanum - conveniently available over the counter from all good chemists in early 19th century Britain - as pain relief. At no time was he taking his opium directly either by smoking or even eating, the title is indicative of his interest in finding the right phrase or most striking turn of words rather than the most accurate description. The downside of this search of his for the best turn of phrase is that in the second edition of his book Thomas de Quincey started taking opium in the form of laudanum - conveniently available over the counter from all good chemists in early 19th century Britain - as pain relief.

The downside of this search of his for the best turn of phrase is that in the second edition of his book he freely expanded sections and in doing so crossed the line from the florid to the overwritten. He attempts to set out the positives and the negatives of his experiences with laudanum.

My lasting impression was that it was overall horrific, the positive side didn't really come over terribly well. The fact of his addiction has to speak for itself. De Quincey wrote that his opium dreams where full of vivid memories of what he had read, his classical education meant that gigantic and threatening Roman armies loomed up and marched unrelentingly through his imagination. He imagines the agricultural labourer, laudanum was not just widely available at the time but also cheap, being overwhelmed by dreams of cows. Worse to imagine the dreams of the industrial labourer with their daily grind magnified in their imaginations.

The oddity of the book for me is that the drug visions sit alongside the ideal of Victorian domesticity. As expressed by de Quincey as the wife serving tea to the gathered family from a silver teapot. This is a comfortable, manageable, middle class addiction. It's a long way from the world of The Corner.

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Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Sep 26, Beverly rated it did not like it. Tedious, he uses a word "viz. Obscure and rambling, but it was written a long, long time ago. I finally finished this! I have started reading it several times, and just couldn't get into it. But today I finished it! As you can tell, I did not like it. One example of a very long rambling sentence: Mary Shelley published Frankenstein in , and it is very readable. I also realise that the author wrote while using opium.

Charles Dickens used opium, and he was still able to write things that made sense. If you're a fan of Thomas de Quincey, I suppose you'd enjoy this book. If you love reading run-on sentences, you'd probably like this book.

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I wish I hadn't wasted my time reading it. View all 4 comments. Nov 23, J. While researching the use of opium for my own fictional writings into the subject, I came across this fascinating article about a fellow whose habit of collecting paraphernalia led him to become both the leading expert on them and an addict.

The interview led me to the work of Dr. Kane, and Kane's analysis led me back to de Quincey, with whom I had some prior familiarity due to my literary studies. De Quincey's writing style is precise and exacting, but he does not have that flair for stor While researching the use of opium for my own fictional writings into the subject, I came across this fascinating article about a fellow whose habit of collecting paraphernalia led him to become both the leading expert on them and an addict.


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De Quincey's writing style is precise and exacting, but he does not have that flair for storytelling which marks a fascinating diarist. Indeed, many of the most intriguing parts of his tale are those he declined to go into in great detail, and throughout one can see his struggles not so much in what he has written on the page, but in what he cannot bring himself to say. He comes to the cusp of his own suffering again and again, but to cross that threshold is to relive his greatest shame and disappointment, so he often skirts it.

No doubt this is why Dr. Kane accuses de Quincey of presenting all the beneficial sides of the drug's use, and ignoring the dangers. Yet I found myself constantly thankful that I was not in de Quincey's position, for his constant and unabated suffering seemed clear enough to me. Indeed, when he spoke of being unable to complete his work the promised third part of his Confessions never arrived , of the weeks or months passing by without his being perceptibly closer to completing all of the great tasks and projects he had set before himself--one does not have to be a taker of laudanum to sympathize, as being an artist of any stripe is quite enough to understand that eternal struggle.

But though some of his narrative is less than vivid, most interesting are his descriptions of opioid dreams, which visions were so influential to fantastical authors like Gogol and Lovecraft. Indeed, his vision of the 'impossible castles of the clouds' are recognizable in the writings of numerous mythos authors, who were so obsessed with the realm of dreams, especially when it bled into quotidian life. View all 7 comments. Feb 15, Andrea rated it liked it. I was disappointed I confess, though I don't know why I had high expectations given I have always found people on drugs profoundly boring—though I note that usually they find themselves extremely interesting.

De Quincy writes 'I have, for the general benefit of the world, innoculated myself as it were, with the poinson of drops of laudanum per day just for the same reason as a French surgeon inoculated himself lately with cancer After all, he heads to Eton, where he will always be at home, to get Lord so-and-so to co-sign a loan against his expected fortune from the Jews. I was sad but not surprised to find such a stereotypical view of jews as existing simply to lend money to wealthy but under-age men.

A window of empathy into the lives of the poor and oppressed emerged, but he only opened the curtain a little, hardly even looked properly through it. There is disappointingly little here about London and walking its streets, which is what I expected to find given all I had read. What I hadn't expected to find was a crazy reflection of imperial angst and racism.

He's in the remote mountains in a cottage when a 'Malay' comes to the door and doesn't speak English. He contrasts 'the beautiful English face of the girl and its exquisite fairness, together with her erect and independant attitude They can't communicate, but apparently all the man wants is somewhere to rest before he goes on his way.

As a parting gift, de Quincey offers him a chunk of opium, which the man proceeds to eat entire--'the quantity was enough to kill three dragoons and their horses, and I felt some alarm for the poor creature; but what could be done? These are regularly frequented by what he calls 'Oriental' dreams. He writes 'The Malay has been a fearful enemy for months. I have been every night, through his means, transported into Asiatic scenes The causes of my horror lie deep, and some of them must be common to others. Southern Asia in general is the seat of awful images and associations.

I suppose this is before the Opium wars and Britain's great Opium-dealing adventure overseas, it prefigures it in a way. And unlike the Heart of Darkness fear of 'primitive' man though he brings up that up as well in relation to 'barbarous' Africa , it is instead fear and trembling before an older greater culture--'the ancient, monumental, cruel and elaborate religions There is so much to think about there, I hope to come back to it at some time, though surely this must have been written about. The only other interesting thing, funny really, was the statement on political economists of the day: Which I love, though I am not sure exactly how that insult works Mar 24, Capsguy rated it really liked it Shelves: Sure, the lead-up to the actual confessions of taking opium and the resulting consequences was longer than the apparent subject matter of the book, but who cares?

I found this to be an insightful text into the dangers of at the time a widely used drug. This also apparently paved the way for many other drug substance abuse memoirs, of which the only one I can think of that I have read were Junky by Burroughs. Confessions is written in a clear, concise manner and with the interesting subject matte Sure, the lead-up to the actual confessions of taking opium and the resulting consequences was longer than the apparent subject matter of the book, but who cares?

Confessions is written in a clear, concise manner and with the interesting subject matter can be read in a couple hours if that. Nowadays, where drug recognition, understanding and its place in society has allowed people across all levels of society to have a firm understanding of the life of drug users and their substances, this text, almost years old may at times be read as slightly as a bore. Most notably, he expanded the opening section on his personal background, until it consumed more than two-thirds of the whole.

Yet he gave the book "a much weaker beginning" and detracted from the impact of the original with digressions and inconsistencies; "the verdict of most critics is that the earlier version is artistically superior".


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The Confessions maintained a place of primacy in De Quincey's literary output, and his literary reputation, from its first publication; "it went through countless editions, with only occasional intervals of a few years, and was often translated. Since there was little systematic study of narcotics until long after his death, De Quincey's account assumed an authoritative status and actually dominated the scientific and public views of the effects of opium for several generations.

Yet from the time of its publication, De Quincey's Confessions was criticized for presenting a picture of the opium experience that was too positive and too enticing to readers. As early as , an anonymous response, Advice to Opium Eaters , was published "to warn others from copying De Quincey. One of the characters of the Sherlock Holmes story, The Man with the Twisted Lip , is an opium addict who began experimenting with the drug as a student after reading the Confessions. De Quincey attempted to address this type of criticism.

When the original was printed in book form the following year, he added an Appendix on the withdrawal process; and he inserted significant material on the medical aspects of opium into his revision. More generally, De Quincey's Confessions influenced psychology and abnormal psychology , and attitudes towards dreams and imaginative literature. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater also served as inspiration to one of Hector Berlioz 's most famous pieces, Symphonie fantastique. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.