There are loads of famous drugs in the world: Heroin, morphine, cocaine, amphetamines, absinthe, and marijuana, to name but a few, all taken for their relaxing, stimulating, or hallucinogenic effects on the human mind and body.
But of all the drugs ever discovered, used and abused over the centuries of mankind’s fascination with addictive substances, none has ever had quite the same allure, draw, mystique and romanticism as opium.
Used for literally thousands of years as a painkiller, opium has had a hold on the collective imagination of mankind unlike any other drug before or since. It conjures up images of hedonism, debauchery, corruption, conspicuous consumption, imperialism, hallucinations and crippling addiction. But what is opium and what is its history?
In this posting, we’ll find out together! So, find a bed, roll a pill, thread your pipe and let’s go opium-ing!
What IS Opium?
Opium is a “drug of addiction”, as they’d say today, which is taken from the latex sap of the opium poppy, or “Papaver somniferum“, to call it by its seductive, scientific Latin name. It’s the same plant from which the drugs morphine, heroin, and codeine are also extracted. It also produces poppy seeds!
Yes, those little black speckles that you find on those buns that you love to buy at the local bakery come from the same flowering plant that has produced one of mankind’s most notorious drugs for hundreds, and hundreds of years!
Delicious!
That said – you’d have to eat a hell of a lot of poppy-seed rolls to crank up any kind of positive drugs-test, so don’t worry! You can go back to enjoying your bagel, now.
The poppies from which opium and its cousin-drugs are derived is native, originally, to the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and parts of central and southern Asia – think Arabia, India, Persia, North Africa and Asia-Minor! Ooh, exotic! In these lands, opium had been known about as far back as the 1st Century C.E., by which time, its properties were already well-known, well-studied, and used extensively for treating a wide range of ailments, by processing the extracted poppy-sap in various forms, such as in poultices and rubs, pills or lozenges, or as a tincture (mixed with alcohol) so that it could be consumed orally – in a liquid form – more commonly known today as laudanum.
The opium sap was extracted from the un-flowered poppy-bulbs by slicing them open to release the sap. This was then collected, and dried. One acre of opium poppy bulbs could yield up to 4 or even 5kg of raw opium sap in a single harvest! Not bad, considering how small the bulbs are!
Once collected, the sap or latex, which is usually a pale yellow colour, is dehydrated to remove as much of the sap’s excess moisture as possible. This process causes the sap to darken and for the opium to become more refined or concentrated. The opium is further extracted until it has reached a dark, brown, sticky, claggy consistency – a sort of thick paste. This is raw, concentrated opium. In this state, the opium can be pressed or formed into cakes or bricks for packaging, storage, and transport.
After extraction, dehydration, refinement and concentration to produce pure opium which can be packaged and shipped, opium could then be sold on the open market.
For much of history, this is where the processing of opium stopped. Of course, it can be further refined, to extract the drug heroin, which is obviously, more potent, but the knowledge of how to do this was not gained until the 1870s, and even then, wasn’t commercially available until the 1890s. Because of this, for thousands of years, people took opium in its raw form, for all manner of uses.
What is Opium used For?
For centuries, opium was used largely as a medicine to treat all kinds of aches and pains, ranging from headaches or fevers, to the symptoms of various medical conditions, such as the pain caused by gout, muscle-cramps, or other conditions. It was even used to try and dull the pain of amputation surgeries! The most common way of taking opium for a long time was in a diluted form, a solution mixed with alcohol, known as Tincture of Laudanum (a ‘tincture’ being any solution including alcohol).
However, by far the most common use of opium in the 1700s, 1800s and 1900s was as a recreational drug to induce relaxation, sleep, or even hallucinations, and to relieve bodily aches and pains. This was usually done through the most common method of using opium – by smoking it! Smoking opium for pain-relief had been practiced before, but in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, what had once been a sideline rapidly became one of the most common methods for ingesting opium, either for its pain-killing and relaxing properties, or due to its addictive nature as a recreational drug.
Opium-Smoking Accessories
The smoking of opium became so popular that soon, much like smoking tobacco, all kinds of accessories and paraphernalia were created to try and make the whole pursuit seem more genteel and refined. What were these accessories, and how were they used?
The Opium Pipe
First and most importantly, was the opium pipe. Opium pipes were long and cylindrical, with a mouthpiece at one end, a long shaft, and a protruding (and detachable) pipe-bowl, usually (but not always) seated about 3/4 along the length of the shaft, near the end of the pipe. The bowls were detachable so that you could smoke multiple bowls at once, if desired. Pipes were made of all kinds of materials, from brass to bone to ivory, porcelain and bamboo. The position of the bowl (held in place with a metal collar or ‘saddle’ to stop it falling off when installed on the pipe-shaft) meant that it could be used to smoke the opium without damaging the rest of the pipe (I’ll explain this more, later).
The Opium Needle
Along with the pipe came the opium needle. Like the pipe having multiple bowls, you often had multiple needles, more for the sake of convenience, rather than anything else. Needles were used to scrape or roll up a tiny ball or “pill” of opium from the purchased cake or brick of solid opium. The pill being rolled, it was skewered on the sharp end of the needle, heated, and then ‘threaded’ into the tiny hole at the top of the pipe-bowl. This process was too fiddly to be done by hand, and some type of sharp quill or pin was needed. To make it easier, opium needles were usually pretty long – up to six inches – so that the opium could be handled carefully and packed into the pipe-bowl easily, without the needle also getting stuck inside (whoops!).
The Opium Lamp
You’ve rolled your pill, threaded your pipe-bowl, and put the bowl back onto the shaft of the opium pipe. Now you’re ready to smoke!…right?
Eh.
No.
See, you can’t actually smoke opium. You can’t light it, and you can’t burn it.
To “smoke” opium, you have to vapourise it!
Vapourising opium is done by heating it up. Once it’s hot, you then “smoke” the vapour or fumes that come off of the heated, melting opium pill that’s been stuffed into the bowl of your opium pipe. You suck the vapour down the pipe, and inhale it to “smoke” the opium.
In order to vapourise the opium mass inside your pipe and smoke it, you need something to heat and melt the opium.
This is where the opium lamp comes in.
Opium lamps are short, squat little lamps, usually made of brass, copper, or a Chinese metal alloy known as “paktong” (nickel, copper and zinc, basically nickel-silver). They have glass chimneys, short, round wicks, and narrow chimney-openings at the tops of the lamps. Some lamps had screw-on covers that went over the top when the lamps weren’t being used. This kept dust away, but also protected the glass chimney from breakage.
The point of these lamps was not to provide light, but rather, heat. It is impossible to smoke opium without one (or at least, without a reliable source of heat!). The lamp was lit, the chimney was placed on top, and then the smoker could hold or rest the bowl of the pipe over the opening at the top of the glass lamp-chimney. The heat from the lamp would warm the bowl, and the opium, thanks to its low melting point, would start to vapourise, allowing the smoker to inhale the fumes down the pipe and get their kick. The conical shape of the lamp’s glass chimney directed and concentrated the heat from the flame directly onto the pipe-bowl, speeding up the vaporisation process.
Remember how the pipe-bowl sticks up out of the shaft of the pipe? This is why. If it was built into the pipe (as with, say a conventional tobacco pipe), the heat from the lamp would damage the shaft. Because the bowl is held away from the shaft, it can be heated using the opium lamp relatively independent of the pipe-shaft. As a result, pipe-shafts, which were not exposed to heat, could be made out of almost anything. Pipe-bowls however, were usually made of heat-tolerant materials such as clay or bone, to prevent damage.
Since the bowl of the opium pipe had to be held over the top of the lamp for the opium inside the bowl to be smoked, the lamps were sometimes raised up on small stands or tables, this stopped the smoker’s arms from getting tired from always having to hold the pipe at an uncomfortable angle or height for long periods of time. It was because of the need to constantly heat the opium while smoking it, that opium smokers invariably laid down flat – either on a bed, or on the floor – to smoke. You simply couldn’t sit upright or stand and smoke and opium pipe, because you couldn’t hold the lamp and the pipe at the same time!
Accessories Tray
Along with the pipes, bowls, needles, lamp, lamp-stand, the containers holding the opium and the various other accessories used with opium (opium scales, pipe-cleaners, etc), another accessory was commonly used, to keep everything neat and tidy: The opium tray!
Really, anything could be used as an opium tray, but in especially elaborate smoking setups, the tray, pipe, lamp etc, would all match and be a complete set together. One reason for having the tray was to keep everything together – remember, pipes could have multiple bowls, and there were also the needles to consider…to stop things from going missing, everything was kept on a tray, and spare pipe-bowls were even kept on special stands to stop them from rolling away if the tray was lifted or moved.
How did you Smoke Opium?
Apart from taking opium in liquid form, as tincture of laudanum, opium was also (and increasingly) taken in vapourised form, by smoking it. We’ve seen what tools and accessories were used in smoking opium, but how was the whole process actually carried out? What did you have to do to actually have a solid round of opium smoking?
Smoking opium as a recreational drug became popular in the 1700s and 1800s, both in Asia, and in Europe, and to smoke it, you usually went to a uh…ahem…special establishment set aside for such exotic pastimes – an opium den!
It was in this den of inequity that the forbidden pleasure of smoking opium would be carried out. But how was it, exactly?
The first step was to prepare the pipe – colloquially known as a “dream stick” because it made you sleepy and gave you visions! You removed the bowl, and with an opium needle, you scraped off a small amount of solid opium from a cake or block of the stuff stored in a container. The scrapings were heated and rolled into a tiny ball, known as a “pill” of opium, again, using the needle.
This pill was heated, and then very carefully threaded or poked down the tiny hole in the bowl of the opium pipe. This hole, designed to take only so much opium, and no more, was the main reason why you needed the opium needle – it would be physically impossible to stick the opium in there using just your fingers.
Once the bowl was prepared, the smoker would lay back on the couch or bed, and hold the mouthpiece of the pipe to the mouth, while the shaft of the pipe stretched out, with the bowl resting on, or over, the narrow glass chimney of a burning opium lamp.
The opium lamp was all-important during the smoking of opium, since the opium had to be heated and vapourised before the fumes from the opium could be inhaled down the pipe and taken into the body. It’s for this reason that opium had to be smoked lying down – nobody wants to stand up, or even sit upright, trying to balance a pipe over a flame, and smoke at the same time! Not very comfortable!
With the opium heated, the smoker could continue to huff and puff on their pipe until the vapours in the opium pill fed into their pipe bowl finally dissipated, by which time they were either asleep, or were reaching for another pre-filled pipe-bowl with which to continue the experience. Smoking opium relieved pain, and also caused drowsiness and hallucinations. It’s the origin of the term “pipe dream”.
Opium Around the World
Unsurprisingly, opium became highly popular, and was smoked as a recreational drug all across Eurasia, from London to Shanghai, Singapore to Saigon, Peking to Paris. In the 1700s and 1800s, and well into the 1900s, it was one of the most pervasive and destructive drugs ever, with dozens, if not hundreds, of opium dens likely to be found in any major city on earth.
Depictions of opium were included in films, TV, novels, short stories…everywhere. From “The Quiet American” by Grahame Greene, to “The Man with the Twisted Lip”, one of the several Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But what happened to opium? Where did it go? How come you don’t have your friendly neighbourhood opium den anymore?
Opium started dying out in the later 1900s. In cities across the world, and especially in China, governments started cracking down on opium-smoking. Dens were raided, and opium paraphernalia was confiscated and destroyed. Pipes, lamps and stashes of opium were smashed, burned, trashed or otherwise destroyed, to make it impossible for people to smoke opium anymore.
Events like WWII, and the Korean, Vietnam, and Chinese Civil Wars, further broke down the opportunities to smoke opium. Opportunities to import or smuggle opium grew less and less. This, combined with opium-eradication campaigns, and the fact that heroin was stronger and required much less prep-time before getting your hit – meant that opium just fell out of fashion. That’s not to say that people don’t still smoke opium today, but not nearly as much as it used to be, 100-odd years ago.
And in case you’re wondering why I haven’t included anything in this posting about the opium wars between Britain and China, that’s because I made another posting about it, some time ago. If you’re interested, you can read it here!
Want more information? Read here!
http://www.chimeralinsight.com/2013/08/the-opium-den.html
https://www.history.com/topics/crime/history-of-heroin-morphine-and-opiates#:~:text=China%20in%201949.-,Opium%20Dens,called%20Chinatowns%20throughout%20the%20West.