The unnatural sensitiveness to cold to which I have alluded is rather
a discomfort than any thing else. It merely makes a higher temperature
necessary for enjoyment, but in no other respect can it be regarded as
deserving special mention. With the thermometer standing at 80° to
85° the sensation of agreeable warmth is perfect; with the mercury at
70° or even higher, there is a good deal of the feeling that the bones
are inadequately protected by the flesh, that the clothing is too
limited in quantity, and in winter that the coal-dealer is hardly
doing you justice.
The cold perspiration down the spine, which was so marked a sensation
during the worst of the trial, has not yet wholly left the system, but
is greatly limited in the extent of surface it affects and in the
frequency of its return.
The tendency to impatience and irritability of temper to which I have
adverted is by far the most humiliating of the effects resulting from
the abandonment of opium. Men differ very widely both in their
liability to these excesses of temper as well as in their power to
control them; but under the aggravations which necessarily attend an
entire change of habit, this natural tendency, whether it be small or
great, to hastiness of mind is greatly increased. So long as the
disturbing causes remain, whether these be the state of the liver or
the stomach, or a want of sufficient sleep, or the excited condition
of the nervous system, the patient will find himself called upon for
the exercise of all his self-control to keep in check his exaggerated
sensibility to the daily annoyances of life.
Intimately connected with the preceding is the frequent recurrence of
sleepless nights, which seem invariably to attend upon the abandonment
of the habit. Possibly some part of this state of agitated wakefulness
may pertain to the natural temperament of the patient, but this
tendency is greatly aggravated by the condition of the nerves, so
thoroughly shattered by the violent struggle to oblige the system to
dispense with the soothing influence of the drug upon which it has so
long relied. Whatever method others may have found to counteract this
infirmity, I have been able as yet to find no remedy for
it. Especially are those nights made long and weary which
_precede_ any long continuance of wet weather. A moist condition
of the atmosphere still serves the double purpose of setting in play
the nervous sensibilities, and, as a concomitant or a consequence, of
greatly disturbing, if not destroying sleep.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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