When stimulated by morphia taken by the hypodermic syringe, unless I would continue reading, with my mind concentrated, I soon got into a state of mental distraction. Loss of sleep at night comes in at about this point. This punishment for outraging the laws of nature by the use of opium began to scourge me after I had quit taking it hypodermically, and had commenced taking it daily and by the mouth.[3] Any one who has suffered much from the terrors of sleeplessness--inability to sleep at night--can understand and appreciate my condition during this time. Loss of sleep, and getting physically out of order incessantly through my ignorance of the secondary effects of opium, and from the effects thereof which no foreknowledge could have avoided, kept me in a state of mind bordering on that of Phlegyas in ancient mythology, who was punished by having an immense stone suspended over his head, which perpetually threatened to fall and crush him. I dreaded the advent of each new day, not knowing what agony or discomfiture it had in store for me. I neglected to mention in the proper place that which, perhaps, is too much of a truism to be referred to at all,--that, as far as a person's nerves and spirits are concerned, the farther away he is from a dose of opium, the better he feels in this respect, no matter what inconvenience he may undergo in others. I mean, the longer time he allows to elapse between doses, the more cheerful and less shaky he will feel. In the prostration that ensues after the relaxation of stimulation, one is truly and indeed miserable in every respect, and goes down into the very depths of despondency and gloom. The period I refer to now is, when nature has reascended from the dismal realms of "Cerberus and blackest midnight," and has recovered somewhat from the baleful and crucifying effects of opium; in fact, when the effect of the drug has passed out of the system for the time. Nature commences to assert herself, and would fully recover her wonted vigor and spirit, did not the drug-damned victim resume again the hell-invented curse. The diarrhoea and other inconveniences and disorders in the stomach and bowels that now set in, are simply the result of nature's effort to throw off the hideous fiend poisoning and destroying her very life. And just here is shown what a terrible violation of the laws of nature the habitual use of opium constitutes. Its action I can compare to nothing more justly than to that of a powerful man knocking down a delicate one as fast as he arises; or, to the tempest-tossed sea washing a mariner ashore, who no sooner rises to his feet than he is caught back by the cruel waves again, repeating the process until at last, faint and exhausted, his life is quenched in the remorseless flood; or, to the mythological fable of Tityus, who, for having the temerity to insult Diana, was cast into Tartarus: there,