“But still, wine constantly leads a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance, and, beyond a certain point, it is sure to volatize and to disperse the intellectual energies: whereas opium always seems to compose what has been agitated, and to concentrate what had been distracted. In short, to sum up all in one word, a man who is inebriated, or tending to inebriation, is, and feels that he is, in a condition which calls up into supremacy the merely human, too often the brutal, part of his nature: but the opium eater (I speak of him who is not suffering from any disease, or other remote effects of opium) feels that the diviner part of his nature is paramount; that is, the moral affections are in state of cloudless serenity; and over all is the great light of the majestic intellect.”
Thomas De Quincey, “Confessions of an English Opium Eater”, 1822.
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