You really have to work hard to get hooked on smoking opium. The Victorian-era form of the drug, known as chandu, is rare, and the people who know how to use it aren’t exactly forthcoming. But leave it to an obsessive antiques collector to figure out how to get addicted to a 19th-century drug. In 2001, an antique dealer was traveling in the Southeast Asia mountains, the villagers would often invite him to smoke opium with them. But he had never really given it much thought. During the heyday of opium smoking, hundreds of little tools were crafted specifically for the preparation, vaporizing, and ingestion of opium. That stuff had just been completely forgotten. During the turn-of-the-century eradication campaigns, it was heaped into piles and burned. Nobody bothered saving anything for posterity. It was seen as this really evil habit and not worthy of being documented, with a couple of exceptions. One was a book published in 1881 called Opium Smoking in America and China. It was written by a New York doctor named H.H. Kane, who spent years researching the opium dens in Manhattan.

The interesting thing about opium is that until the Chinese invented this system for vaporization — sometime in the 18th century — there was no pleasurable way to ingest opium. People were eating it. People were smoking it, mixed with tobacco. But eating it causes really bad side effects, the worst being constipation for weeks. And burning it destroys certain alkaloids in the opium that make the intoxication enjoyable.
Then a Chinese inventor whose name is completely lost to history came up with a system for vaporizing it. That invention opened the door for opium to become a recreational drug. Suddenly, all the bad side effects were lessened. Vaporizing opium takes out a lot of the morphine content, which is the thing that makes you feel stupefied and out of it. Good-quality opium, smoked with the proper accoutrements, is energizing. It doesn’t put you on the floor. Well, you’re lying on the floor to do the actual smoking, but that’s just because it’s the most comfortable position to hold the pipe over the lamp. That’s the only reason the old photographs of opium dens show people lying down. It wasn’t because it made them so stoned they couldn’t stand up.
Whether opium, alcohol or other substances, it is important to get help for your addiction. Call Seabrook to learn more about our programs and start your road to recovery today. (888) 223-0298