I apprehend,
however, that I took it very irregularly, and that I varied from about
fifty or sixty grains to 150 a day. My first task was to reduce it to
forty, to thirty, and as fast as I could to twelve grains.
I triumphed. But think not, reader, that therefore my sufferings were
ended, nor think of me as of one sitting in a _dejected_ state. Think of
me as one, even when four months had passed, still agitated, writhing,
throbbing, palpitating, shattered, and much perhaps in the situation of
him who has been racked, as I collect the torments of that state from the
affecting account of them left by a most innocent sufferer {20} of the
times of James I. Meantime, I derived no benefit from any medicine,
except one prescribed to me by an Edinburgh surgeon of great eminence,
viz., ammoniated tincture of valerian. Medical account, therefore, of my
emancipation I have not much to give, and even that little, as managed by
a man so ignorant of medicine as myself, would probably tend only to
mislead. At all events, it would be misplaced in this situation. The
moral of the narrative is addressed to the opium-eater, and therefore of
necessity limited in its application. If he is taught to fear and
tremble, enough has been effected. But he may say that the issue of my
case is at least a proof that opium, after a seventeen years' use and an
eight years' abuse of its powers, may still be renounced, and that _he_
may chance to bring to the task greater energy than I did, or that with a
stronger constitution than mine he may obtain the same results with less.
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