Confessions of an English opium eater
by Thomas De Quincey · first published 1822
9mentions
3recommended by
8HN commenters
2009–2025first – last mentioned
38% recommend63% neutral
I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater, and have suffered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my acquaintance from being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which I shall have to record, by a long course of indulgence in this practice purely for the sake of creating an artificial state of pleasurable excitement. This, however, is a misrepresentation of my case. True it is that for nearly ten years I did occasionally take opium for the sake of the exquisite pleasure it gave me; but so long as I took it with this view I was effectually protected fro
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Confessions of an English Opium Eater - Thomas De Quincey Good quick read. http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-English-Opium-Eater-Pengui... For an extra $5 you can pick up this which is fantastic: http://www.amazon.com/Geometry-Relativity-Fourth-Dimension-R...
on “JavaScript Web Apps by O'Reilly” ↗…avoids difficult (but artistically relevant) language. This is especially true with Victorian-era English, which is criticized for being overly verbose today. Sometimes, maybe that's true. But if say, Confessions of an English Opium Eater had been written in French and was only read as a contemporary translation, you'd completely miss the beauty of De Quincey's writing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_English_Opiu... https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/thomas-de-quincey/confessi...
on “The Odyssey by Homer, Translated by Samuel Butler” ↗Here's an example: Confessions of an English Opium Eater ( http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2040/2040.txt ). Short for a biography, long for an article (couple hours read). The eloquent language itself makes going back to ordinary Internet English a pain. More…
on “Researchers are beginning to disentangle pain relief from addiction and overdose” ↗Thomas De Quincey's works are on Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Thomas+De+Quin... Confessions of an English Opium Eater, which is autobiographical, is his most famous work.
on “He Loved Opium, Murder and Wordsworth” ↗Shameless plug: You can read free/libre editions of Confessions of an English Opium Eater and Suspiria de Profundis here: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/thomas-de-quincey/confessi... https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/thomas-de-quincey/suspiria... I found myself agreeing with this article…
on “The Animalcule: A Life of Thomas de Quincey” ↗Since 1532 according to https://wonderclub.com/Wildlife/mammals/norwegian_lemming.ht... Lemming suicide is also mentioned on page 66 of the first edition of Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincey: https://archive.org/stream/confessionsofeng00dequ_1#page/66/... This was published in 1832 and revised in 1856.
on “Lemming Suicide Myth: Disney Film Faked Bogus Behavior” ↗…might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstacies might be had corked up in a pint bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach." -Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, John De Quincey. It sounds eerily a lot like the current push for psychedlica, and it originally started with upperclass knowledge workers then, too. But as the dangers of the drug became widely known,…
on “Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs” ↗Empires of the Silk Road yesterday and Inside Central Asia today. Also The Lightness of Being, A Savage War of Peace, and Confessions of an English Opium Eater.
on “What are you reading?” ↗if we could find characters or signs appropriate for expressing all our thoughts Precursor to De Quincy's Confessions of an English Opium Eater as axiomatic Euclidean geometry. [1]:https://archive.org/details/confessionsofeng01dequ/page/n2/m...
on “Robert Hooke's "Cyberpunk” Letter to Gottfried Leibniz” ↗