Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Thomas De Quincey

Feb 2016 · Open Road Media

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A timeless memoir of drug addiction from one of the leading intellectuals of the Victorian age

At first, Thomas De Quincey found opium to be a harmless pleasure. A twenty-year-old intellectual living in nineteenth-century London, De Quincey took laudanum sparingly, spacing out his doses so their effect would not be dulled. But after years of casual use, intense stomach pains caused him to rely on the drug more and more, until he was taking opium daily, and living in a world divided between hallucinatory bliss and aching physical torment.
 
De Quincey’s account of his addiction made him a celebrity. His rhapsodies of hallucination influenced generations of authors, from Poe and Baudelaire to Jorge Luis Borges, and warned countless readers of the dangers of drug dependency. 
 

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Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) was an English author best known for his writings on the delights and terrors of opium addiction. After years of recreational use, De Quincey began taking opium daily in 1813, and wrote about his experiences in Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, serialized in 1821. His depiction of life as an addict made him a pioneer of the form. His other works include On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts (1827) and Suspiria de Profundis (1845).