A resident of the Golden State for 16 years, I have often seen the California
poppies, and each time, I reminded myself of what they were not, i.e., opium
poppies which were in my mind permanently associated with the 19th-century opium
wars. Most recently, pictures of a valley of blossom in a superbloom from a
friend's blog finally prompted me to read about Papaver somniferum. I opened the
Inglis book just to see what it had to say.
Looking back, it was a miracle that I had lived to almost 50 knowing so little
about narcotics in general. Middle-school history classes taught me that opium
was evil, a source of terrible addiction that sapped the Qing China and led to
the wars and humiliations of the nation. More than a century later, the
Communist party must have banned the cursed plant and its fruit. I for one had
not seen anyone consuming it in any form. Stories of relatives bankrupting their
families, before the revolution, by smoking some thick paste made out of it, were
distant tales and my generation grew up in the happy oblivion of an opium-free
China.
In the West, I have lived in a middle-class bubble: after an education for the
right profession came stable and well-paying jobs, a nucleus family, houses,
cars, hobbies, etc. A few anesthesia at the dentists' and the epidural when my
wife went into labor smelled nothing fishy. Whatever happened in the outside of
my comfortable cocoon, the US opioid crises, e.g., did not concern me.
With a couple of pages, the book confirmed the teachings of my history classes
and acknowledged (p290)
Chairman Mao remains the only leader to successfully eradicate poppy farming
and the opium trade in any country in the world, and he achieved it within a
few years of coming to power.
It spent 99 per cent of the ink, however, on what I did not know.
My teachers never expounded on, for example, why people willingly drugged themselves in the first place, considering the inevitable disaster, and I had
thought it involve mostly the well-to-do back in the days. My dad was unlikely to
have firsthand experience himself but he mentioned that it was a medicine that
calmed the nerves and a sedative that helped sleeping.
The book explained that opium, in its history as long as the wheat, cannot be
separated from pain. Both an anesthesia and an anodyne, it is a main ingredient
from Helen's nepenthe in the Odyssey to an instant neuralgia relief and from
ancient mithradates to the indispensible painkiller on the battlefields of
every major war. Smoking opium was not addictive, however, for the Chinese
rice-farmers the way they consumed it. After a day of back-breaking work in the
field, the coolies smoked the stuff to alleviate pain and fend off waterborne
diseases.
Ironically, it was the modern medical advancements, including the discovery of
the morphine (the alkloid in opium), diamorphine (heroin), fentanyl (synthetic
opioid 50 times stronger than heroin), and the hypodermic needle, that helped
unleashing the monster. Consuming heroin by injection, e.g., much more likely results in addiction. And government-led prohibitions in the early 20th century
backfired when it gave birth to huge black markets and organized crimes around
the world.
In 440 pages, the book strung fascinating factoids along the evolution of the
magic narcotic. Among them,
- Marcus Aurelius was one early opium addict and his Meditations therefore was
almost certainly written under influence (or withdraw as he went to the
campaign on the Danube without his theraic).
- Foods discovered in America, including the sweet potato, peanuts, and maize,
sustained huge population growth in China but higher quality of life in Europe.
- Macao was leased to the Portuguese in 1557 because 800 virgins were selected
for the Ming Emperor Jiajing. The medicine that his doctors prescribed to aid
in the enormous task before him asked for ambergris, a substance from the
intestines of the sperm whale, on which the Portuguese had a monopoly.
- The UN's attempts to eradicate Afghanistan's poppies have had the opposite
effect: in times of war, food poverty and instability, opium production only
increases. People may smuggle and deal in heroin to get rich; people farm the
poppy to survive.
So after reading the book, I am much more informed about opium. The action plan
is to keep staying away. I have done well without it and don't need to expierence
it now, except of course in a medical event. Opioid abuse, unfortunately, is
part of the culture and I am content to be fully aware. Early in the book, the
author noted
In the Avesta, the sacred texts of the early Persians, there are three types
of medicine: the knife, the plants and the sacred word. Adherence to the
latter offered the best chance of avoiding the former.
For anything to be sacred, it has to endure. The sacred word here, if I have to
guess, might simply be about a healthy lifestyle.
