Contraries in the Confessions

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas de Quincey is an admission to his contrasting experience with opium. His intention is a warning on the dangers of opium, however, the narrator’s description of his experience uses contrasting diction.

“Opium! dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain!  I had heard of it as I had of manna or of ambrosia, but no further.  How unmeaning a sound was it at that time: what solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart! what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remembrances!”

He states that it is an agent of dread that causes pleasure and pain, and continues to compare it to edible substances made by God or for Gods – manna or ambrosia, which communicates a contrast that is positive and negative. Furthermore, he recounts his experience as solemn and sad, yet happy – illuminating the complex relationship the narrator has with opium. Moreover, the prostitute – Ann, is described using contrasts because she is compared to opium, “standing in equal relation to high and low, to educated and uneducated, to the guilty and the innocent.  Being myself at that time of necessity a peripatetic, or a walker of the streets, I naturally fell in more frequently with those female peripatetics who are technically called street-walkers.” The use of the contrasts – high and low – frame the following sentence for the narrator to comprehend Ann as the contrary he is searching for; he is a “street-walker” of the opposite gender, who is educated and innocent. Furthermore, the narrator states that he is alive because of Ann, “ministering to my necessities when all the world had forsaken me, I owe it that I am at this time alive.” Ann is similar to opium because it, too, helped the narrator during a difficult period. The use of contraries illustrate how addiction happens because it is not a black and white experience, and thus the inconsistency in Quincey’s motivation and his positive experience with opium is reconciled.

– Hongxi Su

Psychedelics Forming a Perfect Union

On page 23, De Quincey mentions that “opium always seems to compose what had been agitated, and to concentrate what had been distracted.” This would then question his beliefs of the drugs and his viewpoint on his way of living. De Quincey would be aware of how the opium soothes his pain and provides a flow of thoughts he believed would be untouched to a non-addicts eye, and yet he knows of this “evidence to its intoxicating power.” At this point of his life, De Quincey has been consumed by the high of opium and says whatever his mind comes up with at the moment. He did not intend to make this drug his source of racist thoughts and roud to pleasure and creativity. On page 56 he even says that “It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest degree, that I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet.” He is riding on this opium high that influences his praise of opium and how it is a “good” drug, but once his ride on cloud nine is over, he writes his dark and harsh thoughts about race. These thoughts were mainly based off of his withdrawal from the drug. His writing definitely gives you a pretty good insight on how a drug addict thinks and acts at different stages of drug usage. This then makes you wonder when drug addiction stops justifying these terrible mentions of races opposite of him. De Quincey is in a way confessing that yes, he has and will be high for the rest of his life but he is not sorry for what he says and creates on this high. Withdrawals are terrible but I accept and believe what I say through my high and withdrawal. This is reminiscent to when couples say their wedding vows, “I, Thomas De Quincey, take you, Opium, to be my [parnter], to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy law, in the presence of God I make this vow.”

– Claudia Hernandez

Nostalgic Beginnings

I found the section where the narrator introduces when he first started doing opium really interesting. It’s a very nostalgic section that I personally felt was sort of comforting. It’s weird because one would think of such an event in a very different way, but the way the author writes the description as almost like they’re looking back at an old fond memory. He says he began to use it because an old college acquaintance recommended it to him because he initially had a toothache but then after trying to take care of that came down with a flu of sorts and the opium was supposed to help with that. Initially, he is unsure of it because he’s heard so many different things about it. He calls it, “dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain!” So, he’s aware of what the effects are, and yet he still goes ahead and tries it. So, we can see that he was cautious but still wary of it. Then, he goes on to say, as he’s remembering these moments:

“Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a mystic importance attached to the minutest circumstances connected with the place and time, and the man (if man he was) that first laid open to me the Paradise of Opium-eaters” (88).

His tone in this section is very nostalgic, like he’s looking back at a fond memory that brings him a bit of joy to remember because it’s in that moment when he remembers that that is the start of everything for him. Obviously, this shouldn’t be taken as a positive perspective of opium because it is a drug and shouldn’t be idolized, but perhaps in this instant it serves a greater role in that it is being use as a way to look back at a time in the narrator’s life that he holds dear to his heart.

-Laura Mateo-Gallegos

Confession or Glorification of Opium Use?

From the start Thomas De Quincey captures my attention with his wording and how he seems to be going back and forth with what his purpose is, making it hard for the reader to know where he stands. On one side it seems that he is trying to share his life so that people can see how bad the opium crisis is but on the other it seems he is glorifying its use. I think the perfect example of this is at the end of page 51 and beginning of page 52 when he compares opium-eating to a sensual pleasure and ‘confesses’ to taking it in excess almost religiously and that opium is an “accursed chain” showing how he acknowledges that it is bad for him because it controls him or “chains” him down but he still finds pleasure in it. He then goes on to say that it might be also one of the causes for his accomplishments that have not been “attributed to any other man”. This sends a message to reader that even though opium is bad, it also has many benefits including benefits of knowledge making it more appealing for readers. He adds on to this by exposing other people who he knows take opium almost as if saying that they would be the same as those people if they take opium. Then with his “research” on the people who consume opium in different areas of London he is trying to show that using opium is normal and not out of the ordinary. It seems he is glorifying the use of opium to give himself an excuse of having become an opium-eater but by doing so he might be convincing others of its appeal either intentionally or unintentionally.

Cristina Delgado

Criminalization

De Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater, highlights the effective criminalization of working class and marginalized communities by utilizing the drug-addict narrative. Despite being an opium user himself, De Quincey harbors a narrative that depicts the working class as druggies and indolent individuals. Furthermore, he seems to be emphasizing opium’s ability to suppress self-determination, rendering one in a state of langor. Consequently, De Quincey might be addressing a fundamental component of empire building that can benefit the crown: the weaponization of narcotics against marginalized communities.

On page 86 De Quincey states,

The opium eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspirations: he wishes and longs, as earnestly as ever, to realize what he believes possible and feels to be exacted by duty, but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power – not of execution only, but even of power to attempt. He lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare; he lies in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease, who is compelled to witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his tenderest love; he curses the spells which chain him down from motion; he would lay down his life if he might but get up and walk, but he is powerless as an infant, and cannot even attempt to rise.

This passage highlights De Quincey’s utilzation of a suppressive narrative that can shed light onto the empire’s ruling techniques. The language used in this passage expresses opium’s capability of chaining a man down, despite their desire to break free and fight for power. A hallmark of the British empire is its unequivocal involvement in global drug-trafficking, undoubtedly utilizing it as an effective mechanism to suppress dissent and dismantle resistance to the crown. Consequently, De Quincey’s narrative throughout this book could have fomented the weaponization of opium against British colonies by the crown.

-Jesus Gonzalez Moctezuma

An Enlightened Addict

Surprisingly, Thomas De-Quincey addresses his addiction outright affront alongside the effects, his sufferings, and widespread use. Usually, the admittance of addiction comes within a certain loss of integrity and respect. But, De Quincey, subject to all these prejudices and reputation, asserts importance and purpose within opium addiction. With his book, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, he demonstrates the path of addiction caused by social and even political derivatives. Within his narrative, he expresses the path to his addiction that was mostly driven by, “depression of spirits attacked me with violence that yielded no remedies but opium” (56). Here, and further within the narrative opium became an escape for physical and psychological pain that De-Quincey experienced. Thus, it addresses an inside perspective of an opium addict as well as critiques of social and political oppression caused by English society. 

Thomas De -Quincey from an established background, still experienced loss and poverty. Knowingly, he decided to take his own path of knowledge addressing his surroundings. As the excerpt describes the “framework of London society is harsh, cruel and repulsive” (71). From early experience, while he is establishing his personal experience of addiction, he is also addressing discrepancies of it as well as English society. 

• Karla Garcia Barrera

Peaceful Innocence

If I could allow myself to descend again to the impotent wishes of childhood, I should again say to myself, as I look to the north, ‘Oh, that I had the wings of a dove … and that way I would fly for comfort,” (pg.87) 

In the section above, the author Thomas De Quincey illustrates the struggles he’s faced throughout his life due to his opium addiction. In the second part of the introduction he mentions his struggle of finding his own purpose in life, how the constant torment has affected his physical and mental estate. In this section he makes a clear connection to his childhood, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove … and that way I would fly for comfort,” he uses these words to foreshadow his death and uses doves to symbolize freedom. That only after his death he’ll find peace within himself. By desiring to go back to his childhood he makes the realization that he did not enjoy his innocence when he had it. He needed opium to be happy, “”with the dew, I can wash the fever from my forehead, and then I shall be unhappy no longer,” (84). He later expressed the pain that he feels with the death of his sister. Quincey’s addiction tormented him but also made him appreciate what he once had. It allowed him to open his eyes and discover what was missing, it was comfort that he always craved.

What is a druggiest’s worth?

Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I lost not a moment in taking the quantity prescribed.  I was necessarily ignorant of the whole art and mystery of opium-taking, and what I took I took under every disadvantage.  But I took it—and in an hour—oh, heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of 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. (59)

De Quincy’s exploration of opium addiction is depressing looking from his personal experience. Something to aid his troubling stomach became an addictive habit. But De Quincy’s experience was an ongoing battle of the working class and the divide between the upper class and lower class. During this time period London was booming with its rapid growth of its cities, but poor treatment of it’s working class and it’s working conditions. The transition from opium to being a “cure” to becoming a problem for De Quincy is only reflective of the thousands who partook in opium to cope with the hardships of the time. The beginning of “The Pleasures of Opium” has De Quincy seeking opium through a friend’s recommendation says, “The druggist—unconscious minister of celestial pleasures!—as if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull and stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be expected to look on a Sunday; and when I asked for the tincture of opium, he gave it to me as any other man might do, and furthermore, out of my shilling returned me what seemed to be real copper halfpence, taken out of a real wooden drawer.” The normalcy of the act of exchanging opium isn’t treated with secrecy, but just common practice. The language used is also telling of the status of the working class- Druggist. Druggist is used as a means of furthering dividing the working class from the upper class. Whereas opium is a pleasure for the elites opium is how the working class gets by. It’s belittling. It’s reminiscent of how in previous readings we had upper class women whoring themselves out and being praised but women who are prostitutes to get by in life are shunned. The hypocrisies of the upper class are only further exposed by De Quincy and other druggiest as they become hooked to a destructive addiction.

The Agent of Unimaginable Pleasure and Pain

In Thomas De Quincey’s, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, he discusses the dangers of the drug opium. While warning people about the dangers of the drug, he also glorifies its experience. De Quincey begins to develop literature that encourages its readers to try the drug, rather than detour them from it. In the section, “Pleasures of Opium”, De Quincey alludes to the idea that opium results in a “peace of mind”. As stated in the section, “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” (51). I found this section of the text to be interesting because in the following sentence he compares the pleasures of the drug to a grave and solemn feeling. In a sense, he is providing readers with a contradictory picture of the pleasures of drug addiction.

In De Quincey’s text, it is not surprising that he provides a contradictory viewpoint about the uses of opium. As opium trading during this time was significant for the British East India company. When the British East India Company traded with China, it caused the first opium war. This primarily occurred due to the number of people in China addicted to the drug. Further in the section, “The Pains of Opium”, De Quincey goes on to state, “Whatever else was wanted to a wise man’s happiness, of laudanum I would have given him as much as he wished, and in a golden cup” (71). Here De Quincey further encourages the use of opium, depicting that one who uses it is wise and happy. Even the use of stating, “I would have given him as much as he wished, and in a golden cup” emphasizes the glorified use of the drug. In all, I believe De Quincey does contradict the pleasures of drug addiction throughout his memoir.

– Jayde Black

Opium Use as a Coping Mechanism

In Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey, De Quincey writes about his opium induced experiences, as well as his personal life. While reading, I noticed that he mentions the death of his sister throughout the book. On page 84, he says, “…the grave of a child whom I tenderly loved, just as I had really beheld them, a little before sun-rise in the same summer, when that child died.” He is describing his setting using a memory of his late sister. In this passage, it was June, but he had thought that it was Easter Sunday, which he thought he should celebrate “the first fruits of resurrection,” even though he was unhappy.

De Quincey then goes on to discuss his actions the morning of this Easter Sunday. He states, “with the dew, I can wash the fever from my forehead, and then I shall be unhappy no longer,” (84). Here, you can assume that he chooses to use opium on this Sunday in order to feel happy. In this passage, he confesses to using opium to get rid of his sadness and grief of the memory of his late sister. After he had taken opium, he starts to describe the scenery in front of him in a more optimistic light. He states, “…immediately I saw upon the left a scene far different; but which yet the power of dreams had reconciled into harmony with the other. The scene was an oriental one…” (84). Here, he slips into this opium-induced state of mind, where his perspective of the site in front of him is different. One can assume that his mind had transported into Asiatic scenes, the oriental scene that he described.

-Nuntehui Espinoza