Frances Hunter

blog of the author To the Ends of the Earth

 

Frances Hunter's Journal
July 2008

Winner, Violet Crown Award for Fiction

Silver Medal Winner, Independent Publisher Book Awards

Finalist, Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Awards

 

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July 3, 2008: Laudanum

There is a strong possibility that Meriwether Lewis was addicted to drugs at the time of his death. Biographers such as Stephen Ambrose have noted that Lewis was depressed, drinking heavily, and was taking opium pills and laudanum (a traditional preparation in which opium is dissolved in alcohol) to help him sleep and to relieve the symptoms of a flareup of malaria, which would have included fever, chills, headaches, and nausea.

Though the true extent of Lewis's drug problems cannot be known with certainty, we chose to make drug addiction part of Lewis's character in To the Ends of the Earth. This is not to imply that Lewis's drug use was recreational or hedonistic. Opium was one of the only pain-killers available in the early 19th century. Like any good doctors, Lewis and Clark had carried the drug in their medicine kit on the Expedition and administered it to the men and Sacagawea on several occasions to relieve pain.

When Lewis became ill in St. Louis in 1809, he would naturally have turned to opium, and would not have had any trouble obtaining it. Narcotic addiction was very poorly understood at the time, and did not become a societal problem until many years later. Control of opiates was nonexistent, and in fact did not really take hold until a full century after Lewis's death.

So what would Lewis have experienced as a user of opium? Apparently the drug's effects varied considerably from user to user. Certainly he would have achieved temporary relief from the pain and digestive upset of malaria. Probably at first, he would have also experienced some increased energy and serenity of mind as the drug helped to lift his depression, and a few weeks of use would not have impaired Lewis's personality or judgement.

Depending on the dosage he took and his state of mind, he may have felt euphoric or experienced visions ("divine enjoyment," as Thomas de Quincey wrote in his classic 1822 account, Confessions of an English Opium Eater), but this experience is far from universal with the use of opium.

The real danger of opium use comes from the addiction. For once a dependency on laudanum has been formed, the pleasant effects of the drug are replaced by a feeling of nothingness without it and a craving for more of the substance. Higher doses are required to achieve the same relief as before. If the addict decides to quit the habit, he exposes himself to a hellish and painful ordeal that combines the symptoms of drug and alcohol withdrawal.

Here's our take on Lewis's laudanum addiction in an excerpt from To the Ends of the Earth:

The pain was making him simple, that was all there was to it.

Lewis lay on the floor on his buffalo robe and tried to breathe. It won’t help to panic, he told himself. If he forced himself to lie quiet, if he just waited patiently enough, the medicine would take effect and everything would be all right.

He pushed his sweaty hair off his forehead and swallowed convulsively. On the way down from Chickasaw Bluffs, he’d had a relapse. By the time they reached here yesterday afternoon, he’d been on the verge of collapse. He had never before experienced the fear of not being in control of his own body. All the potions in his medicine chest had proven useless in defeating this fever; all the herbs and remedies he could think of did nothing to stop the tremors that wracked his body; all the mental determination he had was not enough to drive the black wolf from his mind.

The one thing, the only thing that helped, was laudanum.

Laudanum was opium, diluted with alcohol. It was good for pain; it helped him sleep. It helped control his diarrhea. Without it, he couldn’t get a moment’s peace or rest. But all the same, he despised himself for the weakness that had led him to it, and for the frantic, desperate craving he felt when he went too long without its comforting effects. He’d started taking it back in St. Louis, to calm his stomach and relieve the symptoms of his malaria. Now he’d been on it for months, taking ever-increasing dosages, worried that it was robbing him of his vitality. But if he tried to do without, he felt even more miserable.

But with it...ah, with it came blessed relief and a return of his familiar strength. With it, he could bear to contemplate the future. In fact, his predicament was starting to seem rather funny. The hilarity of sitting down with Madison, of seeing the little midget gape in open-mouthed indignation when he heard Wilkinson was back to his old tricks...Walking into the grand front hallway of Monticello and telling Jefferson that his confidence in Wilkinson had been horribly misplaced...

“And then,” he chuckled to himself, “I’ll tell him I haven’t written a line of his goddamn book! Lord, that’ll be the cherry on the cake!”

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