| 1 | | | Nowadays, opium is a fairly rare drug in | | | | |  |
| | | England, perhaps because the profit margins | | | | |
| | | from importing heroin are so much higher. I | | | | |
| | | know this because, in the early 1980s, after I had | | | | |
| 5 | | outstayed my welcome in south-east Asia and | | | | |
| | | returned with a powerful physical dependence on | | | | |
| | | the drug, I sought help from my doctor. After | | | | |
| | | prescribing me a controlled drug (as was my wish), | | | | |
| | | he informed the Home Office (as was his duty). On | | | | |
| 10 | | our next meeting, he told me he had received an | | | | |
| | | amused response from the Home Office, informing | | | | |
| | | him that I was the first person to have been | | | | |
| | | registered with them as an opium addict since the | | | | |
| | | end of the 1960s. | | | | |
| 2 | 15 | | Perhaps because opium is perceived to belong to | | | | |
| | | the past (although it still grows wild all over the | | | | |
| | | country and is present in several over-the-counter | | | | |
| | | medications), and because we are no longer confronted | | | | |
| | | with the miserable realities of its harmful | | | | |
| 20 | | side effects, it is no longer perceived as a threat. In | | | | |
| | | this way, it has become romanticised and glamor- | | | 60 | | As Mike Jay points out in his excellent Emperors of |
| | | ised - descriptions of it are invariably wreathed in a | | | | | Dreams, it is hard to imagine it marketing "Heroin" |
| | | smoke of nostalgia and longing. It is just this sort of | | | | | quite as successfully, "with its entirely different |
| | | view that Opium: a portrait of the heavenly demon | | | | | evocation of inner-city misery, addiction and low- |
| 25 | | plays on and, in turn, furthers. With its seductive | | | | | life squalor". |
| | | cover of black and gold, its lazy, ill-informed text | | 4 | 65 | | The distinction between the two drugs is, in any |
| | | and endless, lavish illustrations of silk-clad maidens | | | | | event, bogus - they do the same job. It is only their |
| | | and wise, wizened old Chinamen lost to their | | | | | image that separates them, an image that was |
| | | dreams, this book seeks to present opium in the best | | | | | entirely reversed at the end of the 19th century: |
| 30 | | possible light, as if it were a lengthy advert | | | | | opium was the one with the bad reputation, the |
| | | sponsored by some opium growers' association. | | | 70 | | devil that was destroying the fabric of our society |
| | | What troubles me about this kind of titillating drug | | | | | and the harbinger of a sinister Chinese plot to take |
| | | pornography is how it neatly sidesteps any | | | | | over the world. Heroin was new, clean, efficient |
| | | contentious issues, avoids mention of withdrawal | | | | | and, above all, medical. One of the original claims |
| 35 | | and addiction, and dismisses the first opium war | | | | | for the drug was that it would prove an effective |
| | | with China - one of the more shameful and | | | 75 | | treatment for opium and morphine addiction. |
| | | hypocritical episodes in our colonial history - as | | 5 | | | Intelligent, witty, cogent and a bit pissed off, |
| | | being caused simply by "misunderstandings". As | | | | | Emperors of Dreams is one of the best books on |
| | | well as enhancing the drug's image by associating it | | | | | drugs that I have come across, and should be |
| 40 | | with the exotic "East", it lends opium credibility by | | | | | mandatory reading for anyone concerned with drug |
| | | quoting from all the usual suspects: De Quincey, | | | 80 | | legislation. It places the discovery and use of drugs |
| | | Cocteau, Baudelaire, Coleridge, Wilde and William | | | | | in the context of the prevailing post-Enlightenment |
| | | Burroughs. The author makes the mistake of | | | | | and Romantic thinking as well as scientific |
| | | suggesting that these writers' works were created | | | | | discovery, against a background of the period's |
| 45 | | because of, rather than in spite of, their drug use, over- | | | | | social, racial and economic history. Focusing on six |
| | | looking De Quincey's amusingly snobbish claim | | | 85 | | drugs - nitrous oxide, cocaine, ether, opium, |
| | | that "if a man whose talk is of oxen should become | | | | | cannabis and mescaline - Jay builds up a picture of |
| | | an opium-eater, the probability is that (if he is not | | | | | a world in which drugs were much more freely |
| | | too dull to dream at all) he will dream about oxen". | | | | | available, but where problems associated with them |
| 3 | 50 | | My contempt for books such as this arises | | | | | were much less evident. |
| | | precisely because they are so effective. After a | | 6 | 90 | | I am convinced, like Jay, that the American-led, |
| | | couple of hours reading it, I was on the point of | | | | | neo-imperialist "war on drugs" is a dangerous and |
| | | overlooking my years of suffering, harm and | | | | | doomed folly, and that the current drug laws need |
| | | struggle and almost booking a one-way ticket to the | | | | | gradual, if not radical, overhaul. A possible side |
| 55 | | Laotian jungle, there to reside on a teak bed | | | | | effect is that opium will regain some ground from |
| | | surrounded by jasmine flowers. It is these dreamy | | | 95 | | its more potent chemical cousin, and that others will |
| | | and languorous notions of the drug that the fashion | | | | | come and join me on that Home Office list; it is |
| | | house Yves Saint-Laurent hopes to draw on - and | | | | | getting awfully lonely. |
| | | cash in on - by naming one of its perfumes Opium. | | | | |
| | | | | | | | New Statesman |
