A opium fiend describes his experiences as a user in 1893.
Worse Than Nightmare
Charles Ferguson, a young man captured in a recent raid on an opium den at St. Louis, confessed to the following experiences:
“I admit I am an opium fiend. I first acquired a habit of taking morphine. It was given me by a physician. I had fallen and hurt my head, and the drug was given to allay the pain. When I recovered, I was nervous and restless and gradually acquired the habit of opium smoking. A woman who had her own opium layout prepared my first pipe. It made me terribly sick, but the second pipeful gave me relief and I continued the practice.
“The last time I hit the pipe I had smoker’s paralysis. It is terrible. The dreams are a hundredfold more realistic than a nightmare. I thought that I was about to be buried. I saw the coffin and felt myself lifted into it. I noticed the waving of the black plumes of the hearse and felt the jolting of the springs on my imaginary way to the cemetery. I saw the white haired old clergyman and felt myself being lowered in the grave. I was powerless to move hand or foot. One of the Chinese attendants touched me on the shoulder and I woke.
“When one has smoker’s paralysis, one cannot move hand or foot. As soon, however, as any part of the body is moved, even the little finger, the power of locomotion returns. It is an experience that is not often felt. The third attack is usually fatal. I have had it twice, and the chances are that if we had not been interrupted tonight I would have had another and a last attack. I was thoroughly aware of the fact that I might never come out alive when I went down to the dope joint this evening, so you can judge how strong the chains with which the habit binds its victims.”
Source: The Carbon advocate. (Lehighton, Pa.), 18 Nov. 1893.
