bath, some portion of the insupportable languor will be
removed. Walking, however, is the great panacea, nor can it well be
taken in excess. So important is this element in the restorative
process that it may well be doubted whether without its aid a
confirmed opium-eater could be restored to health.
It is useless for any person to think that he can break off even the
least inveterate of his habits without effort, or the more obstinate
ones without a struggle. Wine, spirits, tobacco, after years of
habitual use, require a degree of resolution which is sometimes found
to be beyond the resources of the will. Much more does opium, whose
hold upon the system is vastly more tenacious than all these combined,
call for a resolute determination prepared to meet all the possible
consequences that pertain to a complete and perfect mastery of the
habit. It should be remembered, however, that the experience here
recorded is that resulting from years of large and uninterrupted use
of opium. The entire system had necessarily conformed itself to the
artificial habit. For years the proper action of the nervous,
muscular, digestive, and secretory system had been impeded and forced
in an unnatural direction. In time all the vital functions had
conformed as far as possible to the necessity imposed upon
them. Scarce a function of the body that had not been daily drilled
into a highly artificial adaptation to the conditions imposed upon the
system by the use of opium. Nature, indeed, for a time rebels and
resists the attempt to impose unnatural habitudes upon her action; but
there is a limit to her resistance, and she is then found to possess a
marvellous power of reconciling the processes of life with the
disturbance and disorder of almost the entire human organization.
This power of adaptation, while it unquestionably lures on to the
continued indulgence of all kinds of bad habits, is, on the other
hand, the only hope and assurance the sufferer from such causes can
have of ultimate recovery from his danger. If it requires years to
establish bad habits in the animal economy, why should we expect that
they can be wholly eradicated except by a reversal, in these respects,
of the entire current of the life, or without allowing a commensurate
time for that perfect restoration of the disordered functions which is
expected?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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