A recent viewing of From Hell led me down a black hole of opium-related internet searches, whereupon I discovered an interview from two years ago in Collector's Weekly. The interview is with Steven Martin, a collector of antique opium paraphrenalia who ended up becoming addicted to the drug. Martin shares a number of fascinating details about the traditional Chinese method of smoking opium..
The traditional Chinese method of smoking opium is actually a form of vaporization. If you're lucky enough to find good quality opium in the States or Europe and you throw it in a bowl or bong and put a torch to it, you're doing it wrong. The method devised by the Chinese prevents certain alkaloids in the opium from being burned and makes the effects more enjoyable than simply smoking or eating it.
Furthermore, scenes depicting opium smoking in London during the opium heyday are bullshit. As far as Martin can tell, opium smoking didn't exist in England. Contemporary depictions by writers like Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde are so bad he considers them "laughable". Inauthentic depictions extend to other media as well, and Martin calls out From Hell and Once Upon a Time in the West in particular as being inaccurate.
Though Martin is obviously well versed in opium smoking and antiquities, he seems less knowledgeable about addiction itself. He believes that a prodigious opium smoking friend was killed by her withdrawal symptoms and says "[a]ccording to the old books, [withdrawal] used to kill people pretty violently." Opiate withdrawal, though incredibly painful and uncomfortable, is not considered deadly by any modern measure.
The full interview is quite lengthy and well worth a read. I'll definitely be picking up his two books in the future.
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