Knowing your danger, keep out of its reach; for, no matter what its transitory influences may be, its most certain, permanent, and overshadowing results are pain and misery! Having put forth my hand to warn the world of the miseries inherent in opium, when perverted from its proper medical purpose, I now end this chapter, in order to hasten towards a conclusion of my task. CHAPTER XV. DIFFICULTIES OF WRITING THIS BOOK.--AN ATTEMPT TO RENOUNCE OPIUM IN THE LATTER STAGES OF THE HABIT DESCRIBED.--COLERIDGE AND DE QUINCEY.--ANIMADVERSIONS UPON DE QUINCEY'S "CONFESSIONS." I have promised to describe an attempt to renounce opium while the victim is in the latter stages. I will endeavor to fulfil my promise, although sick and weary of the subject, and sick and weary in body and mind. This book has been composed at irregular intervals, in moments snatched from an otherwise busy life. It must be inconsecutive and loose in composition. I beg the reader's kindest indulgence, and his consideration of the purpose I have had in view,--the benefit of my fellow-man. Oh! if I can deter but one from being drawn into the "maelstrom," as Coleridge has so aptly termed it; if I can save but one from the woe and misery I suffer daily, I shall feel well rewarded for the effort I have made to record my unhappy personal history. No fondness for detailing my grievances has had anything to do with the writing of this little work; on the contrary, I have an almost unconquerable repugnance to the subject. It is only with the greatest effort that I can compel myself to return to it. I have been wearied, and consumed with pain and misery, during the whole progress of it. Had I been master of my own time, as far as literary merit is concerned, it would have been more acceptable, although my mind is and has been, during the whole course of it, debilitated and oppressed by opium. My condition and preoccupied time precluded that object altogether. If it is found intelligible, my object, as far as literary excellence is concerned, will have been attained. But, "Begin, murderer; leave thy damnable faces, and begin!" I have not for a number of years made an effort to renounce opium. I know that my unaided efforts would prove fruitless. My constitution would no more stand the test than it would the abstinence from food. Death would follow sooner from want of opium than it would from want of food. Seventy-two hours' abstinence from opium would, I think, prove fatal in my case; and I believe that I would die by the expiration of that time. It may be impossible to conceive, without actual experience, the singular effect opium has upon the system in making itself a necessity. Being no physician, I am unable to give a technical description of that effect, but, with the reader's indulgence, I shall try, however, to describe it in my own language.