Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Thomas De Quincey 1821
This autobiography traces one man's use of opium, from early relief to dependence and disturbing dreams. He also recalls Ann, a young woman who helped him survive hunger on London's streets.
138 pages 2h 41m reading time
- The first major book in English about drug addiction, written by an addict about his own life.
- Shows opium as both a source of joy and a slow trap, describing pleasure, withdrawal, and terror honestly instead of simply warning against the drug.
- Treats dreams as worth close study, suggesting that the mind holds buried memories and feelings that come back in strange, powerful images.
- Created a model for later addiction memoirs and drug writing, and inspired Charles Baudelaire's "Artificial Paradises," which partly translates and retells it.
- Its long, musical sentences and dream scenes influenced writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, and its ideas about hidden memory fed into later thinking about the unconscious mind.
Written to pay debts
De Quincey wrote it in small London rooms while deep in debt and badly needing money.
First a magazine story
It first appeared in two parts in the London Magazine, with no author's name attached.
An instant sensation
The magazine pieces caused a stir, and readers eagerly guessed who the anonymous opium-eater was.
Rewritten decades later
In 1856 he more than doubled its length, though many readers still prefer the shorter original.