Re: Opiates and the arts.

Well, all I can say is ...

Sweet sizzling in my vein today, and everything seems brighter.
Insidious hissing in my brain, and life seems sharper, whiter.
My edges blurred, an inner fizz
That thrills and enervates alike.
I’m slower, dreamy, broken down
My heart rate peak and spike.

Wondrous sparking round my brain, and shit! I’m God, I am!
The knowledge hurts my skull, the thought that everything’s a sham.
My eyeballs itch, my eyelids twitch
I hear a song, it must be me
But coming deep within some other
Me, a stoned-out zombie of a bitch.

The racing heart tick tocks my life, and good stuff fills up my vein,
Luscious sleep fights alien limbs and maybe it’s insane –
But me and my fix, my whole box of tricks
Take me somewhere far off,
Out there, better world,
A whole other way to get kicks.

© Carole Jones 27/11/11

Re: Opiates and the arts.

Laudenum was an extremely addictive drug which was also used on patients in the 1800s before anaesthetics were discovered, and of course, it was a very poweful drug indeed.

Some people actually used it as a so-called social enhancer, but they weren't aware that it was addictive, until it was too late and it wasn't illegal then.

There is no question today though that any illegal addictive substance can kill you, so there's no excuse for any snorting, sniffing or smoking these days.

I once had to be given morphine for pain relief, and you could have cut my head off and I wouldn't have cared because it did relieve the pain.

Going back to the 1700s, the doctors of those times put their own lives on the line trying out different things, and most especially William Morgan, a Welshman in 1785, who discovered X-rays by boiling mercury. Of course, Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen took this theory and claimed it as his own, but only in the interests of mankind.

Anyway, that's another topic, but valid in this one in that those early doctors used what was available to them, at the time, but learned from their uses as well in order that understanding of dangerous substances could be learned, but in vain by some.