Confessions of an American Opium Eater

Blame me for the rocks
And baby bones and broken lock
On the garden
(Sam Beam, Lilith’s Song)
I.In the 19th century, Thomas De Quincey wrote a memoir that some consider to be the first “addiction memoir,” although De Quincey never wrote of being addicted. He used one of the most common drugs of his day: laudanum. The ruby tincture—comprising the juice of the opium poppy (papaver somniferum) dissolved in alcohol—to which such flavors as nutmeg were added in order to