A SLAVE OF OPIUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 134, 8 June 1934, Page 14

A SLAVE OF OPIUM.

Tortured by pain, Dc Quincey was the slave of opium for a great part of ' his life. In its-grip he was alive, but he was unable to work, to understand what he read, even to answer letters. Often he took 8000 drops of laudanum—tincture of opium—in. a day.

Ho shrank froin sleep as from the most savage tortures. He had fearful visions, and he lived through a hundred years in a night. A monstrous crocodile kissed him. and its head divided into a thousand heads. Vast processions passed through his brain in mournful pomp, and friezes of never-ending stories were painted 011 the darkness. A great theatre opened within his brain; buildings swelled into infinity-. He saw cities never seen by man, lakes changed into seas, and the sea into imploring, wrathful, despairing faces; He was taken to China, and lie endured mythological tortures. 111 his awful dreams he was hooted, and chattered at by monkeys, cockatoos and parakeets; fixed on the summit of a pagoda for centuries; worshipped and sacrificed. He was buried for a thousand years in stone coflins. The Court ladies* of Charles I. danccd before him. He was terrorised by uglv birds, snakes and table legs which seemed to live.