Opium
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Opium (poppy tears, lachryma papaveris) is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum). Opium contains approximately 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade.
The production of opium itself has not changed since ancient times.
Opium for illegal use is often converted into heroin, which is less bulky, making it easier to smuggle, and which multiplies its potency to approximately twice that of morphine. Heroin can be taken by intravenous injection, intranasally, or smoked (vaporized) and inhaled.
Cultural references
Literature
There is a rich and longstanding literature by and about opium users. Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is one of the first and most famous literary accounts of opium addiction written from the point of view of an addict, and details both the pleasures and the dangers of the drug. De Quincey writes about the great English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, another famous literary opium addict.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, references to opium and opium addiction abound in English literature, as can be seen, for example, in the opening few paragraphs of Charles Dickens's unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. In Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes short story The Man with the Twisted Lip, Holmes visits an opium den in order to pursue his investigations, but his lucidity upon shedding his disguise outside the den suggests that he did not partake of the drug. Other works from nineteenth century Britain include "The Lotus-Eaters" by Alfred Lord Tennyson and (some would argue) "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti, which depicts thinly-veiled experiences of addiction and withdrawal. Oftentimes, characters in Edgar Allan Poe works are opium users (see "The Oval Portrait" and "Ligeia"), and sometimes the usage of drugs and its corresponding hallucinations or experiences are depicted. Poe himself is not believed to have used opium. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan" is also widely considered to be a poem of the opium experience. In 1957 the physician Douglas Hubble wrote an article called "Opium Addiction and English Literature" that chronicles the use of opium by prominent English writers, and its influence on their works [1]. Jack Black's memoir You cannot Win chronicles one man's experience both as an onlooker in the opium dens of San Francisco, and later as a "hop fiend" himself. In the House of the Scorpions, Mexico becomes a place where opium is planted. Oscar Wilde also wrote of opium use in The Picture of Dorian Gray when the main character visits a den to alleviate his chronic thinking and to add to the dark reputation that the lead character develops.
In the twentieth century, as the use of opium was eclipsed by morphine and heroin, its role in literature became more limited. In The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, Wang Lung, the protagonist, gets his troublesome uncle and aunt addicted to opium in order to keep them out of his hair. William S. Burroughs autobiographically describes the use of opium beside that of its derivatives. The book and subsequent movie, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, may allude to opium at one point in the story, when Dorothy and her friends are drawn into a field of poppies, in which they fall asleep.
Music
Hector Berlioz' Symphony Fantastique tells the tale of a man who overdosed on the drug thinking of the woman he loves. Each of the symphony's five movements takes place at a different setting and with increasingly audible effects from the drug. For example, in the fourth movement, Marche au Supplice, the artist dreams that he is walking to his own execution. In the fifth movement, Songe d’une Nuit du Sabbat, he dreams that he is at a witch's orgy, where he witnesses his beloved dancing wildly along to the demented Dies Irae.
