Thomas De Quincy's autobiographical tract Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) is an account, you might have guessed, of the author's struggles and glories with opium. Though he was a brilliant and well educated young man, De Quincy - who had left school and was ashamed to ask for help - entered a period of near-homelessness in the dank London streets. This period of destitution resulted in chronic stomach pains, for which he began to take a tincture of opium, or Laudanum, to combat the pain. These Confessions are the result of a decades-long battle with addiction to the drug, divided into two parts: The Pleasures of Opium, and The Pains of Opium.
